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Copyright 1904 
Thk Bobbs-Merrill Company 
May 


G 


Limited Popular Edition 
Copyright 1905 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company 


July 


)\K 2 ^ , 7 s' 


TO 

POST WHEELER, LITT. D 


My history will furnish materials for a pretty 
little Romance which shall be entitled and de- 
nominated the loves of Lord B. Byron, 180 J^. 


I hate things all fiction ; and therefore the 
Merchant and Othello have no great associa- 
tions to me ; but Pierre has. There should 
always be some foundation of fact for the 
most airy fabric, and pure invention is but 
the talent of a liar. Byron, 1817 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEB PAGE 

I The Feast oe Ramazan 1 

II “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know ** 9 

III The Boomerang 18 

IV The Little Boy in Aberdeen 26 

V An Anythingarian 34 

VI What the Dead May Know 41 

VII The Youth in Fleet Prison 49 

VIII A Savage Spur 58 

IX Gordon Wakes and Finds Himsele Famous 66 

X The Price oe the Bauble 75 

XI The Beaten Path 86 

XII “ Man’s Love Is oe Man’s Liee a Thing 

Apart” 92 

XIII The Smirched Image 96 

XIV What Came oe the Treacle-Moon 100 

XV The Piteall 112 

XVI The Despoiling 120 

XVII The Bursting oe the Storm 128 

XVIII Gordon Stands at Bay 135 

XIX The Burning oe an Eeeigy 142 

XX The Exile 152 

XXI Gordon Swims for a Life 156 

XXII The Face on the Ivory 162 

XXIII The Devil’s Deal 167 

XXIV The Mark of the Beast 173 

XXV Teresa Meets a Stranger 180 

XXVI A Woman of Fire and Dreams 189 

XXVII The Evil Eye 197 

XXVIII The Haunted Man 204 

XXIX Teresa’s Awakening 208 

XXX The Peace of Padre Somalian 218 

XXXI At the Feet of Our Lady of Sorrows 223 

XXXII The Restraining Hand 235 

XXXIII The Passing of Jane Clermont 246 


CHAPTEB 


PAQB 

XXXIV 

Tita Intervenes 

252 

XXXV 

In the Casa Garden 

256 

XXXVI 

The Face at the Window 

263 

XXXVII 

Trev ANION Finds an Ally 

269 

XXXVIII 

The Heart op a Woman 

276 

XXXIX 

Barriers Burned Away 

283 

XL 

The Oath on the Kriss 

290 

XLI 

Ashes op Denial 

298 

XLII 

Gordon Tells a Story 

303 

XLIII 

One Golden Hour 

309 

XLIV 

By Order of the Pope 

316 

XLV 

The Summons 

321 

XLVI 

The Potion 

325 

XLVII 

The Complicity of the Gk>DS 

329 

XLVIII 

The All of Love 

337 

XLIX 

“ You Are Aiming at My Heart! 

344 

L 

Cassidy Finds a Lost Scent 

348 

LI 

Dr. Nott’s Sermon 

352 

LII 

Trevanion in the Toils 

359 

LIII 

The Coming of Dallas 

363 

LIV 

The Pyre 

372 

LV 

The Call 

378 

LVI 

The Farewell 

386 

LVII 

The Man in the Red Uniform 

395 

LVIII 

The Archistrategos 

401 

LIX 

In Which Teresa Makes a Journey 

410 

LX 

Tried As By Fire 

416 

LXI 

The Renunciation 

423 

LXII 

Gordon Goes Upon a Pilgrimage 

427 

LXIII 

The Great Silence 

434 

LXIV 

“ Of Him Whom She Denied a Home, 



the Grave ” 

437 


Aftermath 

440 


THE CASTAWAY 


CHAPTER I 

THE FEAST OP RAMAZAN 

A cool breeze slipped ahead of the dawn. It blew dim 
the calm Greek stars, stirred the intricate branches of 
olive-trees inlaid in the rose-pearl fagade of sky, bowed 
the tall, coral-lipped oleanders lining the rivulets, and 
crisped the soft wash of the gulf-tide. It lifted the 
strong bronze curls on the brow of a sleeping man who 
lay on the sea-beach covered with a goatskin. 

George Gordon woke and looked about him: at the 
pallid, ripple-ridged dunes, the murmuring clusters of 
reeds; at the dead fire on which a kid had roasted the 
night before ; at the forms stretched in slumber around 
it — Suliotes in woolen kirtles and with shawl girdles 
stuck with silver-handled pistols, an uncouth and sav- 
age body-guard; at his only English companion, John 
Hobhouse, who had travelled with him through Albania 
( 1 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


"and to-morrow was to start back to London, asleep now 
with a saddle for a pillow. While he gazed, day broke 
effulgent, like light at the first hour, and the sun rose, 
pouring its crimson wine into the goblet of the sea’s 
blue crystal. 

For a full year Gordon had roughed it in the wilder- 
ness, sleeping one night in a pasha’s palace, the next 
in a cow-shed — a strange choice, it seemed, for a peer 
of twenty-two, who had taken his seat in the House 
of Lords and published a book that had become the 
talk of London. Yet now, as he rose to his feet and 
threw back his square-set shoulders, his colorless face 
and deep gray-blue eyes whetted with keen zest. 

^^This is better than England,” he muttered. ^^How 
the deuce could anybody make such a world as that, I 
wonder ? For what purpose were there ordained dandies 
and kings — and fellows of colleges — and women of a 
certain age — and peers — ^and myself, most of all ?” His 
thought held an instant’s thin edge of bitterness as his 
look fell : his right boot had a thicker sole than the left, 
and he wore an inner shoe that laced tightly under the 
shrunken foot. 

Stepping gingerly lest he waken his comrade he 
threaded the prostrate forms to the shambling rock- 
path that led, through white rushes and clumps of 
cochineal cactus, to the town. A little way along, it 
crossed a ledge jutting from the heel of the hill. Tinder 
this shelf the water had washed a deep pool of limpid 
emerald. He threw off his clothing and plunged into 
the tingling surf. He swam far out into the sea, under 
the sky’s lightening amethyst, every vein beating with 
delight. 


THE CASTAWAY 


3 


Before He came from the water, the sunrise had 
gilded the tops of the mountains ; while he dressed on 
the rock it was kindling golden half-moons on the 
minarets of Missolonghi, a mile away. 

As his eyes wandered over the scene — ^the strange 
stern crags, the nearer fields broidered with currant- 
bushes, the girdling coast steeped in the wild poignant 
beauty of an Ionian October — ^they turned with a 
darker meaning to the town, quiet enough now, though 
at sunset it had blazed with Mussulman festivity, while 
its Greek citizens huddled in shops and houses behind 
barred doors. It was the feast of Eamazan — a time for 
the Turks of daily abstinence and nightly carousal, a 
long fast for lovers, whose infractions were punished 
rigorously with hastinado and with the fatal sack. Till 
the midnight tolled from the mosques the shouts and 
muskets of the faithful had blasted the solitude. And 
this land was the genius-mother of the world, in the 
grip of her Turkish conqueror, who defiled her cities 
with his Moslem feasts and her waters with the bodies 
of his drowned victims ! 

Would it always be so? Gordon thought of a roll 
of manuscript in his saddle-bag — verses written on the 
slopes of those mountains and in the fiery shade of 
these shores. Into the pages he had woven all that old 
love for this shackled nation which had been one of 
the pure enthusiasms of his youth and had grown and 
deepened with his present sojourn. Would the old spirit 
of Marathon ever rearise ? 

He went back to the sandy beach, sat down, and 
drawing paper from his pocket, began to write, using 


4 


THE CASTAWAY 


his knee for a desk. The spell of the place and hour 
was upon him. Lines flowed from his pencil: 

“The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! 

Where burning Sappho loved and sung. 

Where grew the arts of war and peace, — 

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! 

Eternal summer gilds them yet. 

But all, except their sun, is set. 

The mountains look on Marathon — 

And Marathon looks on the sea; 

And musing there an hour alone, 

I dreamed that Greece might still be free; 

For, standing on the Persians’ grave, 

I could not deem myself a slave.” 

His gaze fell on the figures about the dead fire, 
wrapped in rough capotes — rugged descendants of a 
once free race, hardier than their great forefathers, 
but with ancient courage overlaid, cringing now from 
the wands of Turkish pashas. A somber look came to 
his face as he wrote : 

“ ’Tis something, in the death of fame. 

Though linked among a fettered race. 

To feel at least a patriot’s shame. 

Even as I sing, suffuse my face; 

For what is left the poet here? 

For Greeks a blush — for Greece a tear. 

Must we but weep o’er days more blessed? 

Must we but blush? Our fathers bled. 

Earth! Render back from out thy breast 
A remnant of the Spartan dead! 

Of the three hundred grant but three 
To make a new Thermopylas!” 


THE CASTAWAY 


5 


He looked up. The crescents on the spires of the 
town were dazzling points of light in the gold-blue air, 
the morning full-blown, clean and fragrant with scents 
of sun and sea. In the midst of its warmth and beauty 
he shivered. An odd prescient sensation had come to 
him like a gelid breath from the upper ether. He 
started at a voice behind him : 

^^More poetry, FU lay a guinea 

Gordon did not smile. The chill was still creeping 
in his veins. He thrust the paper into his pocket as 
Hobhouse threw himself down by his side. 

The latter noticed his expression. “What is it?^^ he 
asked. 

“Only one of my moods, I fancy. But just before you 
spoke I had a curious feeling; it was as though this 
spot — that town yonder — were tangled in my destiny.” 

The barbaric servants had roused now and a fire was 
crackling. 

“There’s a simple remedy for that,” the other said. 
“Come back to London with me. I swear I hate to 
start to-morrow without you.” 

Gordon shook his head. He replied more lightly, for 
the eerie depression had vanished as swiftly as it had 
come : 

“Not I! You’ll find it the same hedge-and-ditch 
old harridan of a city — ^wine, women, wax-works and 
weather-cocks — the coaches in Hyde Park, and man 
milliners promenading of a Sunday. I prefer a clear 
sky with windy mare’s-tails, and a fine savage race of 
two-legged leopards like this,” — ^he pointed to the fire 
with its picturesque figures. “I’ll have another year of 
it, Hobhouse, before I go back.” 


6 


THE CASTAWAY 


^^You’U have spawned your whole quarto by then, no 
doubt 

^Terhaps. I am like the tiger; if I miss the first 
spring I go growling hack to my Jungle. I must take 
the fit as it offers. Composition comes over me in a 
kind of frenzy, and if I donT write to empty my mind, 
I go mad. Poetry is the lava of the imagination, whose 
eruption prevents an earthquake. Much the little en- 
vious knot of parson-poets who rule the reviews know 
about it V’ he continued half satirically. 

Hobhouse smiled quizzically. The man beside him 
had had a short and sharp acquaintance with England’s 
self-constituted authorities in poetic criticism. Two 
years before, fresh from college, he had published a 
slender volume of verses. In quality these had been in- 
different enough, but the fact that their author was a 
peer offered an attractive text for the gibes of the re- 
viewers. Their ridicule pierced him. His answer had 
been immediate and stunning — a poetical Satire, keen 
as a rapier, polished as a mirror, pitiless as the Inqui- 
sition, which flayed his detractors one by one for the 
laughter of London. The book had been the talk of 
the year, but while at the very acme of popularity, the 
youthful author had withdrawn it, and, still smarting 
from the sneers which had been its inspiration, had 
sailed for the Levant. A thought of this sensitiveness 
was in Hobhouse’s mind as Gordon continued: 

^^When I get home I’ll decide whether to put it into 
the fire or to publish. If it doesn’t make fuel for me 
it will for the critics.” 

‘^^You gave them cause enough. You’ll admit that.” 

^‘^They should have let me alone.” Gordon’s voice 


THE CASTAWAY 


7 


under its lightness hid a note of unaifected feeling, and 
his eyes gathered spots of fire and brown. ^Tt wasn't 
much — ^that first poor little college book of mine ! But 
no! I was a noble upstart — a young fool of a peer 
that needed taking down ! So they loosed their literary 
mountebanks to snap at me! Is it any wonder I hit 
back? Who wouldnT?” 

^^At least,” averred Hobhouse, ^Very few would have 
done it so well. There was no quill-whittler left in the 
British Isles when you finished that Satire of yours. 
Hone of the precious penny-a-liners will ever forgive 
you.” 

The other laughed. was mad, I tell you — mad!” 
he said with humorous ferocity. wrote in a passion 
and a sirocco, with three bottles of claret in my head 
and tears in my eyes. Besides, I was two years younger 
then. Before I sailed I suppressed it. I bought up 
the plates and every loose volume in London. Ah well,” 
he added, ^^one’s youthful indiscretions will pass. When 
I come back, Ifil give the rascals something better.” 

He paused, his eyes on the stony bridle-path that led 
from the town. ^^What do you make of that?” he 
queried. 

Hobhouse looked. Along the rugged way was ap- 
proaching a strange procession. In advance walked an 
officer in a purple coat, carrying the long wand of his 
rank. Following came a file of Turkish soldiers. Then 
a group of servants, wearing the uniform of the Way- 
wode — ^the town^s chief magistrate — and leading an ass, 
across whose withers was strapped a bulky brown sack. 
After flocked a rabble of all degrees, Turks and Greeks. 

^^Queer!” speculated Hobhouse. ^TFs neither a fu- 


8 


THE CASTAWAY 


neral nor a wedding. What other of their hanged cere- 
monials can it be?” 

The procession halted on the rock-shelf over the deep 
pool. The soldiers began to unstrap the ass^s brown 
burden. A quick flash of horrifled incredulity had 
darted into Gordon’s eyes. The ass balked, and one 
of the men pounded it with his sword-scabbard. While 
it flinched and scrambled, a miserable muffled wail came 
from somewhere — seemingly from the air. 

Gordon stiffened. His hand flew to the pistol in his 
belt. He leaped to his feet and dashed up the scraggy 
path toward the rock, shouting in a voice of strained, 
infuriate energy: 

''By Ood, Hdhhouse, there's a woman in that sack!" 


CHAPTER II 

BAD AND DANGEROUS TO KNOW ” 

At Lady Jerse/s town house, in Portman Square, the 
final course had been served and the gentlemen^s glasses 
were being replenished. Lady Jersey gave the signal. 
The gentlemen rose and bowed, the three ladies withdrew 
to the drawing-room ; then the host, the earl, said, crack- 
ing a walnut : 

heard the other day that George Gordon is on his 
way back to London. You were with him in the East 
some time, weren’t you, Hobhouse ?” 

There were but three besides the host : Sheridan, the 
playwright, looking the beau and wit combined, of a 
clarety, elderly, red complexion, brisk and bulbous — 
William Lamb, heir of the Melbourne title, a personi- 
fied "career’^ whose voice was worn on the edges by pub- 
lic speaking — and Hobhouse, whom the earl addressed. 

The young man bowed. left him in Greece just a 
year ago.” 

^Ts it true,” asked Lamb, sipping his Moet with finical 
deliberation, ^That he drinks nothing but barley-water 
and dines on two soda biscuits ?” 

‘^He eats very little,” assented Hobhouse; ^^dry toast, 

( 9 ) 


10 


THE CASTAWAY 


water-cress, a glass of claret — that was usually his regi- 
men/^ 

^'What an infernal pose!’^ Lamb exclaimed, rousing. 
^^A ghoul eating rice with a needle ! He does it to be 
eccentric. Why, at Cambridge they say he used to keep 
a tame bear ! His appetite is all apiece with his other 
fopperies abroad that the papers reprint here. One week 
he’s mopish. Another, he’s for being jocular with every- 
body. Then again he’s a sort of limping Don Quixote, 
rowing with the police for a woman of the town — like 
that Creek demirep of his he rescued from the sack, that 
Petersham tells about.” 

^^hTobody believes Petersham’s yarns !” growled Sheri- 
dan. 

was on the ground when that incident occurred. 
I’m sorry the clubs got hold of it. It’s a confounded 
shame.” 

Hobhouse spoke explosively. Lord Jerse3^’s shrewd 
deep-set eyes gathered interest, and Sheridan paused 
with a pinch of snuff in transit. 

^Tt happened one sunrise, when we were camped on 
the sea-beach just outside Missolonghi. That is a Creek 
town held by the Turks, who keep its Christian citizens 
in terror of their lives. The girl in the case was a Creek 
by birth, but her father was a renegado, so she came un- 
der Moslem law.” 

‘T presume she was handsome,” drawled Lamb caus- 
tically. ‘T credit Cordon with good taste in femininity, 
at least.” 

Hobhouse flushed, but kept his temper. 

'Tt’s nonsense,” he went on, — ^The story that it was 
any affair of his own. There was a young Arab-looking 


THE CASTAWAY 


11 


ensign who had fallen in with ns, named Trevanion — 
he had deserted from an English sloop-of-the-line at 
Bombay. He had disappeared the night before, and we 
had concluded then it was for some petticoat deviltry 
he’d been into. I didn’t like the fellow from the start, 
but Gordon wouldn’t give an unlucky footpad the cold 
shoulder.” 

Sheridan chuckled. ^^That’s Gordon ! I remember he 
had an old hag of a fire-lighter at his rooms here — Mrs. 
Muhl. I asked him once why he ever brought her from 
Hewstead. ^ell,’ says he, ^no one else will have the 
poor old devil.’ ” 

^^Come, come,” put in Lamb, waspishly. ^^Let’s hear 
the new version ; we’ve had Petersham’s.” 

^^We had seen Trevanion talking to the girl,” Hob- 
house continued, ^fin her father’s shop in the bazaar. 
We didn’t know, of course, when we saw the procession, 
whom the Turkish scoundrels were going to drown. I 
didn’t even guess what it was all about till Gordon 
shouted to me. His pistol was out before you could 
wink, and in another minute he had the fat leader by the 
throat.” 

^^With Mr. Hobhouse close behind him,” suggested 
the earl. 

hadn’t a firearm, so I was of small assistance. We 
had some Suliote ragamuffins for body-guard, but they 
are so cowed they will run from a Turkish uniform. 
They promptly disappeared — ^till it was all over. Well, 
there was a terrible hullabaloo for a while. I made sure 
they would butcher us out and out, but Gordon kept his 
pistol clapped on the purple coat and faced the whole 
*at down.” 


12 


THE CASTAWAY 


^^Wish lie had shot him,” rumbled Sheridan, "and 
appealed to the resident ! In the year of Grace 1810 it^s 
time England took a hand and blew the Turk out of 
Greece, anyway !” 

"I presume there was no doubt about the offense?” 
asked the earl. 

"It seemed not. Trevanion was a good-looking, 
swarthy rogue, and had been too bold. Though he got 
away himself, he left the girl to her fate. It was the 
feast of Eamazan, and he must have known what that 
fate would be. The time made interference harder for 
Gordon, since both law and religion were against him. 
He had learned some of their palaver. He told them he 
was a pasha-of-three-tails himself in his own country, 
and at last made the head butcher cut open the sack. 
The girl was a pitiful thing to see, with great almond 
eyes sunk with fright — ^fifteen years old, perhaps, 
though she looked no more than twelve — and her chalk- 
white cheeks and the nasty way they had her hands and 
feet tied made my blood boil. There was more talk, 
and Gordon flourished the firman Ali Pasha had given 
him when we were in Albania. The officer couldn’t 
read, but he pretended he could and at last agreed to 
go back and submit the matter to the Waywode. So 
back we all paraded to Missolonghi. It cost Gordon a 
plenty there, but he won his point.” 

"That’s where Petersham’s account ends, isn’t it?’* 
The earl’s tone was dry. 

^Tt’s not all of it,” Hobhouse answered with some 
heat. "Gordon was afraid the rascally primate might 
repent of his promise (the Mussulman religion is strenu- 
ous) so he took the girl that day to a convent and as soon 


THE CASTAWAY 


13 


as possible sent her to Argos to her brother. She died, 
poor creature, two months afterward, of fever.” 

Lamb sniffed audibly. 

^^ery pretty! He ought to turn it into a poem. I 
dare say he will. If you hadnT been there to applaud, 
Hobhouse, I wager the original program wouldn’t have 
been altered. Pshaw! He always was a sentimental 
harlequin,” he went on contemptuously, ^^strutting about 
in a neck-cloth and delicate health, and starving himself 
into a consumption so the women will say, ‘Poor Gor- 
don — how interesting he looks!’ Everything he does 
is a hectic of vanity, and all he has written is glittering 
nonsense — snow and sophistry.” 

Sheridan’s magnificent iron-gray head, roughly 
hacked as if from granite, turned sharply. “He’s no 
sheer seraph nor saint,” he retorted; “none of us is, 
but curse catch me! there’s no sense in remonstering 
him ! He’ll do great things one of these days. He was 
bom with a rosebud in his mouth and a nightingale 
singing in his ear !” 

The other shrugged his shoulders, but at that mo- 
ment the protestant face of the hostess appeared. 

“How interesting men are to each other!” Lady Jer- 
sey exclaimed. “We women have actually been driven to 
the evening papers.” 

The four men followed into the drawing-room, fur- 
nished in ruby and dull gold — a room perfect in its 
appointments, for its mistress added to her innate kind- 
ness of heart and tact a rare taste and selection. It 
showed in the Sevres-topped tables, the tawny fire- 
screens, the candelabra of jasper and filigree gold, and 
in the splendid Gainsborough opposite the door. 


14 


THE CASTAWAY 


The whole effect was a perfect setting for Lady Jer-^ 
sey. In it Lady Caroline Lamb appeared too exotic, too 
highly colored, too flamboyant — like a purple orchid in 
a dish of tea-roses ; on the other hand, it was too warmly 
drawn for the absent stateliness of Annabel Milbanke, 
Lady Melbourne’s niece and guest for the season. The 
latter’s very posture, coldly fair like a sword on salute, 
seemed to chide the sparkle and glitter and color that 
radiated, a latent impetuosity, from Lady Caroline. 

“1 see by the Courier** observed Lady Jersey, ^That 
George Gordon is in London.” 

^^Speak of the devil — sneered Lamb ; and Sheridan 
said: 

^^That’s curious; we were just discussing him.” 

Miss Milbanke’s even voice entered the conversation. 
‘^One hears everywhere of his famous Satire. You 
think well of it, don’t you, Mr. Sheridan?” 

‘^My dear madam, for the honor of having written it, 
I would have welcomed all the enemies it has made its 
author.” 

^‘What dreadful things the papers are always saying 
about him!” cried Lady Jersey, with a little shudder. 

hope his mother hasn’t seen them. I hear she lives 
almost a recluse at Newstead Abbey.” 

^W^ith due respect to the conventions,” Lamb inter- 
posed ironically, ^flhere’s small love lost between them. 
His guardian used to say they quarrelled like cat and 
dog.” 

^‘He never liked the boy,” disputed the hostess, 
warmly. ^^Why, he wouldn’t stand with him when he 
took his seat in the Lords. I am right, am I not, Mr. 
Hobhouse ?” 


THE CASTAWAY 


15 


^TTes, your ladyship. Lord Carlisle refused to intro- 
duce him. The Chancellor^ even, haggled absurdly over 
his certificate of birth. Gordon came to Parliament 
with only one friend — an old tutor of his — entered 
alone, took the peer’s oath and left. He has never 
crossed the threshold since.” 

^^What a shame,” cried Lady Caroline, ^That neither 
Annabel nor I have ever seen your paragon. Lady 
J ersey ! Mr. Hobhouse, you or Mr. Sheridan must 
bring him to dinner to Melbourne House.” 

^Tf he’ll come!” said Lamb, sotto voce^ to the earl. 
^^They say he hates to see women eat, because it destroys 
his illusions.” 

Lady Jersey shrugged. 'Tt is vastly in his favor 
that he still has any,” she retorted, rising. ^^Come, Caro, 
give us some music. We are growing too serious.” 

Lady Caroline went to the piano, and let her hands 
wander over the keys. Wild, impatient of restraint, 
she was a perpetual kaleidoscope of changes. How an 
unaccountably serious mood had captured her. The 
melody that fell from her fingers was a minor strain, 
and she began singing in a voice low, soft and caressing 
— ^with a feeling that Annabel Milbanke had never 
guessed lay within that agreeable, absurd, perplexing, 
mad-cap little being : 

“Maid of Athens, ere we part, 

Give, oh, give me back my heart! 

Or since that has left my breast. 

Keep it now and take the rest! 

Hear my vow before I go, 

Zoe mou, sas agapo! 


16 


THE CASTAWAY 


By thy tresses unconfined. 

Wooed by each ^gean wind! 

By those lids whose jetty fringe, 

Kiss thy soft cheeks’ blooming tinge !> 

By those wild eyes like the roe, 

Zoe mou, sas agapo! 

By those lips I may not taste! 

By that zone-encircled waist! 

By all token-fiow’rs that tell 
(Word can never speak so well! ) 

By love’s changing joy and woe, 

Zoe mou, sas agapo r 

She sang the lines with a strange tenderness — a 
haunting accent of refrain, that had insensibly moved 
every one in the room, and surprised for the moment 
even her own matter-of-fact husband. A womanly soft- 
ness had misted Lady Jersey's gaze, and Annabel Mil- 
banke looked quickly and curiously up at the singer as 
she paused, a spot of color in her cheeks and her hazel 
eyes large and bright. 

There was a moment of silence — ^a blank which Hob- 
house broke: 

^^He wrote that when we were travelling together in 
Albania. I’m glad I sent it to you. Lady Caroline. I 
didn’t know how beautiful it was.” 

Miss Milbanke turned her head. 

‘^So that is George Gordon’s,” she said. She had 
felt a slight thrill, an emotion new to* her, while the 
other sang. ^^Mr. Hobhouse, what does he look like?’^ 

The young man, who was by nature and liking some- 
thing of an artist, took a folded paper from his wallet 
and spread it out beneath a lamp. 


THE CASTAWAY 


17 


made this sketch the last night I saw him in 
Greece,” he said, ^'at Missolonghi, just a year ago.” 

Lady Caroline Lamb and Miss Milbanke both bent 
to look at the portrait. When they withdrew their eyes,, 
the calmer, colder features showed nothing, but Lady 
Caroline’s wore a deep, vivid flush. 

^^Mad, had and dangerous to know!” her brain was 
saying, ‘^yet — ^what a face I” 


CHAPTER III 

THE BOOMERANG 

^^George Gordon!’^ 

There was an unaffected pleasure in the exclamation, 
and its echo in the answer : ^‘Sherry ! And young as 
ever. I’ll be bound!” 

heard last night at Lady Jersey’s you were in 
London,” said Sheridan, after the first greetings. ^^So 
you’ve had enough of Greece, eh ? Three years ! What 
have you done in all that time ?” 

have dined the mufti of Thebes, I have viewed the 
harem of Ali Pasha, I have kicked an Athenian post- 
master. I was blown ashore on the island of Salamis. 
I caught a fever going to Olympia. And I have found 
that I like to be back in England — ^the oddest thing of 
all 1” 

Gordon ended half-earnestly. Threading the famil- 
iar thoroughfares, tasting the city^s rush, its intermina- 
bleness, its counterplay and torsion of living, he had 
felt a sense of new appreciation. His months of freer 
breathing in the open spaces of the East had quickened 
his pulses. 


( 18 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


19 


The pair strolled on together chatting, the old wit 
linking his arm in the yonnger man’s. He had always 
liked Gordon and the appearance of his famous tour de 
force had lifted this liking into genuine admiration. 

^^Hobhouse says you’ve brought back another book,” 
said he, presently. 

^T’ve a portmanteau crammed with stanzas in Spen- 
ser’s measure, but they’re likely to be drivelling idiot- 
ism. I must leave that to the critics. I have heard 
their chorus of deep damnations once,” Gordon added 
ruefully. ^^But no doubt they’ve long ago forgotten 
my infantile ferocities.” 

Sheridan shot a keen glance under his bushy brows. 
Could the other, he wondered, have so undervalued the 
vicious hatred his cutting Satire had raised in the ranks 
of the prigs and pamphleteers it pilloried? In his 
long foreign absence had he been ignorant of the flood 
of tales so assiduously circulated in the London news- 
papers and magazines? 

His thought snapped. Gordon had halted before a 
book-shop which bore the sign of ^^The Juvenile Li- 
brary,” his eye caught by printed words on a paste- 
board placard hung in its window. 

^^Sherry !” he cried, his color changing prismatically. 
^^Look there !” 

The sign read : 


**Queen Mob/' 

For writing the which Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley 
Stands lately expelled from University College, Oxford, 
3s, 6d. 


20 


THE CASTAWAY 


Also 

**Englisli Bards and Scotch Reviewers** 

A Poetical Satire 

By a Nolle Lord Travelling Alroad> 

A few copies of this work 
(Suppressed ly the Author at great expense) 
which can le bought nowhere else in London — 1 guinea, 

^^Devil take the blackguard V* blurted Sheridans • He 
followed the other into the musty shop where a stooped, 
agate-eyed old man laid aside a black-letter volume of 
Livy’s Eoman History and shuffled forward to greet 
them. 

Gordon’s face was pallid and his eyes were sparkling. 
He had written the book the pasteboard advertised in a 
fit of rage that had soon cooled to shame of its retaliative 
scorn. He had believed every copy procurable destroyed 
before he left England. He had thought of this fact 
often with self-congratulation, dreaming this monu- 
ment of his youthful petulance rooted out. To-day it 
was almost the first thing he confronted. The sedu- 
lous greed that hawked his literary indiscretion to the 
world roused now an old murderous fury that had some- 
times half-scared him in his childhood. He was bat- 
tling with this as he pointed out the second item of 
the sign. 

^^How many of these have you?” he asked the pro- 
prietor shortly. 

^^Twelve.” 

will take them all.” Gordon put a bank-note ©n 
the counter. 


THE CASTAWAY 


21 


The bookseller regarded him sagely as he set the 
books before him. It was a good day’s bargain. 

A doorway led from the shop into a binding-room, 
where stood a stove with glue-pots heating upon it. 
With a word to Sheridan, Gordon seized his purchase 
and led the way into this room. The dealer stared and 
followed. 

He saw the purchaser tear the books cover from 
cover, and thrust them one by one into the fiery maw 
of the stove. And now, at the stranger’s halting step 
and the beauty of his face, sudden intelligence came to 
him. Five — ^ten — ^twenty guineas apiece he could have 
got, if he had only found the wit to guess ! The know- 
ledge turned his parchment visage saffron with sup- 
pressed cupidity, anger and regret. 

The bell in the outer room announced a customer, 
and the bookseller went into the shop, leaving the door 
ajar. Through it came a voice — a lady’s inquiry. She 
was asking for a copy of the Satire whose pages were 
shrivelling under Sheridan’s regretful eye. 

Gordon’s hand held the last volume. He had turned 
to look through the door — a fine, tall, spirit-looking girl, 
he thought. His observant eye noted her face — a cool, 
chaste classic, and her dress, rich, but with a kind of 
quiet and severity. 

Yielding to some whimsical impulse, he went rapidly 
out to the pavement. She was seating herself in her 
carriage beside her companion as he approached. 

had just secured the last copy,” he stated gravely, 
almost apologetically. have another, however, and 
shall be glad if you will take this.” 


22 


THE CASTAWAY 


A glimmer of surprise had shadowed the immobile 
face, but it passed. 

^^You are very kind,’’ she said. ^Tt seems difficult 
to procure. We saw the sign quite by accident !” She 
was demurring — on prudential grounds. She hesitated 
only a moment — just long enough for him to become 
aware of another personality beside her, an impression 
of something wild, Ariel-like, eccentric yet pleasing — 
then she searched her purse and held out to him a 
golden guinea. 

^‘That is the price, I think,” she added, and with the 
word ^^Melbourne House” to the coachman, the carriage 
merged in the stream of the highway. 

Annabel Milbanke’s complaisant brow was undis- 
turbed. She was very self-possessed, very unromantic, 
very correct. As the chestnut bays whirled on toward 
Hyde Park Corner, she did no more than allow her 
colorless imagination to ask itself; ^^Who is he, I 
wonder ?” 

Her fragile, overdressed companion might have an- 
swered that mental question. As Gordon had come 
from the doorway, his step halting, yet so slightly as 
to be unnoticed by one who saw the delicate symmetry 
of his face, a quick tinge had come to Lady Caroline 
Lamb’s cheeks. The brown curls piled on the pale oval 
of brow, the deep gray eyes, the full chiselled lips and 
strongly modelled chin — all brought back to her a pen- 
cil sketch she had once seen under a table-lamp. The 
tinge grew swiftly to a flush, and she turned to look 
back as they sped on, but she said nothing. 

Gordon had seen neither the flush nor the backward 
^look. His eyes, as he surveyed the golden guinea in his 


THE CASTAWAY 


23 


hand, held only the picture of the calm girl who had 
given it to him. 

^^Melbourne House,” he repeated aloud. ^^What a 
stately beauty she has — the perfection of a glacier! I 
wonder now why I did that,” he thought quizzically. 

never saw her before. A woman who wants to read 
my Satire; and I always hated an esprit in petticoats! 
It was impulse — ^pure impulse, reasonless and irrespon- 
sible. God knows what contradictions one contains !” 

He tossed the coin in the air abstractedly, caught it 
and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket as Sheridan re- 
joined him. The latter had not seen the carriage and 
its occupants. 

^^A fine ash-heap we’ve made,” said the wit, ^^and a 
pity too ! Curse catch me, I wish Td written it ! If it 
were mine, instead of suppressing, Fd print a new edi- 
tion and be damned to them. If they won’t forget this, 
cram another down their throats and let them choke 
on it ! Come and drink a bottle of vin de Graves with 
me at the Cocoa-Tree,” he continued persuasively. 
^‘Tom Moore is in town. We’ll get him and go to the 
Italian Opera afterward. What do you say ?” 

Gordon shook his head. ^^Hot to-day. I have an ap- 
pointment at nty rooms. Hobhouse pretends he wants 
to read my new manuscript.” 

^‘To-morrow, then. I want to get the rights of the 
latest apocryphal stories of you the clubs are relish- 
ing.” 

^^Stories? What stories?” 

Sheridan cleared his throat uneasily. ^^Surely, let- 
ters — newspapers — ^must have reached you in Greece?” 

^^Hewspapers !” exclaimed Gordon. haven’t read 


24 


THE CASTAWAY 


one in a year. As for letters — ^well, it has been little 
better. So the newspapers have been talking of me, 
ehr 

^^Not that any one in particular believes them,^^ in- 
terposed his companion hastily, ^^or anything the 
Scourge prints, for that matter!’^ 

^‘The Scourge? That was the worst of the lot before 
I left. It’s still mud-flinging, is it ? I suppose I might 
have expected it. There’s scarcely a witling-scribbler 
in London I didn’t grill with that cursed Satire of 
mine, that they won’t let stay in its grave. But the 
newspaper wiseacres — what under the canopy can they 
know of my wanderings? I haven’t set eyes on a jour- 
nalist since I left.” 

^^Of course, they’re perfectly irresponsible I” 

^^What are they saying. Sherry?” 

Sheridan hesitated. 

"Come, come; out with it!” 

"The Morning Post reported last week that the pasha 
of the Morea had made you a present of a Circassian 
girl—” 

"It was a Circassian mareT 

"And that you had quarters in a Franciscan nun- 
nery.” 

"A monastery!” Gordon laughed — an unmirthful 
laugh. "With one Capuchin friar, a bandy-legged 
Turkish cook, a couple of Albanian savages and a drag- 
oman ! What tales are they telling at the clubs ?” 

"That’s about all that’s new — except Petersham. He 
has some tale of a Turkish peri of yours that you saved 
from a sack in the .^Egean.” 

Gordon’s lips set tight together. The pleasure he 


THE CASTAWAY 


25 


had felt at his return had been shot through with a 
new pain that spoke plainly in his question: 

^^Sherry! Is there no story they tell of these two 
years that I need not blush at 

The other caught at the straw. ^They say you swam 
the Hellespont, and outdid Leander.^^ 

obliged to them! I wonder they didn’t invent 
a Hero to wait for my Leandering!” The voice held 
a bitter humor, the antithesis of the open pleasantry of 
their meeting. presume that version will not be long 
in arriving,” Gordon added, and held out his hand. 

Sheridan grasped it warmly. shall see you to- 
morrow,” he said, and they parted. 

From the edge of his show-window, William Godwin, 
the bookseller, with a malignant look in his agate eyes, 
watched Gordon go. 

In the inner room he raked the fragments of charred 
leather from the stove, thinking of the guineas he had 
let slip through his fingers. Then he sat down at his 
desk and drawing some dusty sheets of folio to him 
began to write, with many emendations. His quill pen 
scratched maliciously for a long time. At last he leaned 
back and regarded what he had written with huge sat- 
isfaction. 

^The atheistical brat of a lord!” he muttered vin- 
dictively. ‘T’ll make his ribs gridirons for his heart! 
I’ll send this as a leader for the next issue of the 
Scourge r 


CHAPTEE IV 


THE LITTLE BOY IN ABERDEEN 

is magnificent Hobhouse looked up as he spoke. 

It was in Gordon^s apartment in Keddish’s Hotel. 
The table was strewn with loose manuscript — ^the verses 
he had laughingly told Sheridan were ^likely to be 
drivelling idiotism.^^ Over these Hobhouse had bent 
for an hour, absorbed and delighted, breathing their 
strange spirit of exhilaration, of freedom from rhyth- 
mic shackles, of adventure into untried poetic depths. 
They stood out in sharp relief — original, unique, of 
classic model yet of a genre all their own. It would 
be a facer for Jeffrey, the caustic editor of the Edin- 
burgh Review, and for all the crab-apple following Gor- 
don's boyish rancor had roused to abuse. Now he said : 

^^Nothing like it was ever written before. Have you 
shown it to a publisher yet?” 

Gordon glanced at the third person in the room — a 
gray-haired elderly man with kindly eyes — as he re- 
plied : 

^^Dallas, here, took it to Miller. He declined it.” 

^^The devil !” shot out Hobhouse, incredulously. 

*John Murray will publish it,” Gordon continued. 

( 26 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


27 


had his letter with the copyhold an hour ago/’ He 
took a paper from his pocket and held it up to view, 
congratulate you both/’ Hobhouse said heartily. 

Gordon shrugged acridly, and rising, began to pace 
the room. The sore spot had been rankling since that 
walk with Sheridan. 

‘^Wait till the critics see it. They will have other 
opinions, no doubt. Well, never mind,” he added. ‘T 
was peppered so highly once that it must be aloes or 
.cayenne to make me taste. They forced me to bitter- 
ness at first ; I may as well go through to the last. Vce 
victis! I’ll fall fighting the host. That’s something.” 

The gray-haired man had picked up his hat. It was 
not a hat of the primest curve, nor were his clothes of 
a fashionable cut. They were well-worn, but his neck- 
cloth was spotless, and though his face showed lines of 
toil and anxiety, it bore the inextinguishable marks of 
gentility. Gordon had not told him that he had spent 
a part of the day inquiring into the last detail of in- 
valid wife and literary failure; now his glance veiled a 
singular look whose source lay very deep in the man. 

^^Don’t hasten,” he said. have a reputation for 
gloom, but my friends must not be among the reput- 
antsl Least of all you, Dallas.” 

The other sat down again and threw his hat on the 
table, smiling. ^^Gloom?” he asked. ^^And have you 
still that name ? You were so as a little laddie in Aber- 
deen, but I thought you would have left off the Scotch 
blues long ago with your tartan.” 

wish I could,” cried Gordon, ^^as I left off the 
burr from my tongue. How I hated the place — all ex- 
cept Dee-side and old Lachin-y-gair ! That pleased me 


28 


THE CASTAWAY 


for its wildness. If God had a hand in its valleys, the 
devil must have had a hoof in some of its ravines, for 
the clouds foamed up from their crevices like the spray 
of the ocean of hell. Dallas,” he said, veering, ‘Vhat 
a violent, unlovely little wretch it was we used to know 
so many years ago, — ^you never saw him, Hobhouse! — 
that little boy in Aberdeen !” 

Hobhouse looked up. There was a curious note in 
the voice, a sort of brooding inquiry, of regret, of wist- 
fulness all in one. It was a tone he had never heard 
so plainly but once before — a night when they two had 
sat together before a camp-fire on the Greek sea-coast, 
when Gordon had talked of old Cambridge days, and of 
Matthews, his classmate, destined to be drowned. It 
was this tone Hobhouse heard. 

The older man’s eyes had a retrospective haze, which 
he winked away, as he smoothed down the frayed edges 
of his waistcoat with a hesitating hand, as though half- 
embarrassed under the other’s gaze. 

^^A little misshapen unit of a million,” continued 
Gordon, ^^a miserable nothing of something, who 
dreamed barbarous fantasies and found no one who un- 
derstood him — ^no one but one. Do you remember him, 
Dallas?” 

The other nodded, his head turned away. ^^He was 
not so hard to understand.” 

^^Not for you, Dallas, and it’s for that reason most 
of all I am going to paint his picture. Will it bore you, 
Hobhouse?” he asked whimsically. ^^To discuss child- 
hood is such a snivelling, popping small-shot, water- 
hen waste of powder to most people.” 

Hobhouse shook his head, and the speaker went on: 


THE CASTAWAY 


2 ^ 


^Tirst of all, I wish you would witness a signature 
for me,’^ — and handed him the paper he had taken from 
his pocket. 

As the young man glanced at it, he looked up with 
quick surprise, but checked himself and, signing it, 
leaned back in his chair. 

Gordon returned to his slow pace up and down the 
room, and as he went he talked: 

■ ‘The fiercest animals have the smallest litters, and 
he was an only child, though he had been told he had a 
half-sister somewhere in the world. He was immanage- 
able in temper, sullenly passionate, a queer little bundle 
of silent rages and wants and hates— the sort people 
call ‘inhuman.^ There was never but one nurse, if I 
remember, who could manage him at all. He had a 
twisted foot — the gift of his mother, and added to by 
a Nottingham quack. He lived in lodgings, — cursed 
fusty they were, too, the fustiest in Aberdeen, — with 
his mother. He had never set eyes on his father; how 
he knew he had one, I can’t imagine. When he was old 
enough, he was sent to ‘squeel’, as they called it in 
Aberdeen dialect — day-school, where he learned to say: 

‘God — ^made — man. 

Let — us — love — Him,’ 

and to make as poor a scrawl as ever scratched over a 
frank. He was a blockhead, a hopeless blockhead ! The 
master, — ^how devout and razor-faced and dapper he 
was! he was minister to the kirk also, — ^used to topsy- 
turvy the class now and then, and bring the lowest 
highest. These were the only times the boy was at the 


so 


THE CASTAWAY 


head. Then the master would say, ^How, George, man, 
let’s see how soon you can limp to the foot again !’ This 
w*as a jest, but when the others shouted, the boy used 
io turn cold with shame. Small wonder he didn’t learn, 
for he didn’t want to. A pity, too, Dallas, for in those 
days three words and a half-smile would have changed 
him. I venture it would take more than that to-day !” 

He paused, his brows frowning, his lips drawn softly. 
When he went on, it was in a more constrained tone: 

‘^One year, suddenly, everything changed. His guard- 
ian took him from the school and he had a tutor — a 
very serious, saturnine young man, with spectacles,” — 
Dallas had taken off his own and was polishing them 
earnestly with his handkerchief, — ^Vho didn’t make 
the boy hate him — a curious thing! He was a great 
man already in the boy’s eyes, because he had been in 
America when the Colonies were fighting King George. 
The boy would have liked to be a colonist too — he had 
never been introduced to the gaudy charlatanry of kings 
and the powwowishness of rank. He hadn’t become a 
lord then, himself. 

^This marvel of a tutor wasn’t pestilently prolix. 
He taught him no skimble-skamble out of the cate^ 
chism, though he was a good churchman; but the first 
time the boy looked in those big horn spectacles, he 
knew there was one man in the world who could under- 
stand him. The tutor made him want to learn, too, 
and strangest of all, he never seemed to notice that his 
pupil was lame. How did he perform that miracle, 
Dallas?” 

The older man set his glasses carefully on the ridge 
of his nose, as he shook his head with a little graceful. 


THE CASTAWAY 


31 


deprecating gesture that was very winning. Hobhouse’& 
eyes were tracing the design of the carpet. 

remember once,” Gordon continued, ^^a strange 
thing happened. The hoy^s father came to Aberdeen. 
One day — the boy was walking up the High Street with 
his tutor — some one pointed him out. To think that 
splendid-looking man in uniform was his father! He 
felt very pitiful-hearted, but he plucked up courage and 
went up to him and told him his name.” 

Dallas, who had shifted uneasily in his chair, cleared 
his throat with some energy, rose and stood looking out 
of the window. 

^‘The splendid gentleman forgot to take the boy in 
his arms. He looked him over and lisped: ^A pretty 
boy — but what a pity he has such a leg A queer thing 
to say, wasnT it, Hobhouse ! 

^^One of those fits of rage that made all right-minded 
people hate him came over the boy when he heard that. 
‘Dinna speak of it! Dinna speak of itT he screamed^ 
and struck at the man with his fist. Then he ran away 
— off to the fields, I think — as fast as he could, and 
that was the first and .the last time he ever saw his 
father. 

^^He had forgotten all about his tutor, but the tutor 
ran after him, and found him, and took him for a 
wonderful afternoon — ^miles away, clear to the seaside, 
where they lay on the purple heather and he read to 
him out of the history — ^what was it he read to the 
boy, Dallas?” 

The man by the window jumped. ^^Bless my soul,” 
he said, wiping his eyes vigorously; do believe it 
Was the battle of Lake Eegillus !” 


32 


THE CASTAWAY 


^TTes, it was, Dallas! And they went in swimming 
and had supper at a farmhouse — 

they did I So I believe they did 

^^And they didn’t get home till the moon was up. Ah 
—Dallas 1” 

Gordon went over and laid his hand on the other’s 
arm. ^^Do you think I shall ever forget ?” he said. 

imagine that was the end of the tutorship,” ob- 
served Hobhouse. 

^^Yes, the idiots!” Gordon laughed a little, as did 
the elder man, though there was a suspicious moisture 
in the latter’s eyes. ‘^They said he was spoiling me. 
You came to London, Dallas, and wrote books — moral 
essays and theology — ^too good to give you money or 
fame. Yes, yes,” — as Dallas made a gesture of dissent, 
— ^^much too good for this thaw-swamped age of rickety 
tragedy and canting satire! But when you left Aber- 
deen, you left something behind. It was a pony — four 
sound straight legs, Dallas, to help out a crooked one — 
a fat, frowsy, hard-going little beast, I’ve no doubt, but 
it seemed the greatest thing in all Scotland to me.” 

^Tshaw!” protested Dallas. ^Tt laid me only four 
pounds. I’ll swear.” 

^^Well,” pursued Gordon, ^The boy finally dropped 
back into the old stubborn rut. He went to Harrow 
and came out a solitary, and to Cambridge and they 
called him an atheist. Life hasn’t been all mirth and 
innocence, milk and water. I’ve seen nearly as many 
lives as Plutarch’s, but I’m not bilious enough to for- 
get, Dallas. You were the first of all to write and con- 
gratulate me when the critics only sneered. When I 
came to London to claim my seat in the Lords (a 


THE CASTAWAY 


33 


scurvy honor, but one has to do as other people do, con- 
found them!) without a single associate in that body 
to introduce me — I think a peer never came to his 
place so unfriended — ^you rode with me to the door, 
Dallas, you and I alone, and so we rode back again/’ 

He paused, took up the paper Hobhouse had signed 
and handed it to the man who still stood by the win- 
dow. 

‘^Dallas,” he said, ^^you gave me my first ride in the 
saddle. I’ve been astride another bigger nag lately — 
one they call Pegasus ; this is its first real gallop, and I 
want you to ride with me.” 

With a puzzled face Dallas looked from the speaker 
to the paper. It was Gordon’s copyhold of the verses 
that lay there in manuscript, legally transferred to him- 
self. 

As he took in its significance, a deep fiush stole into 
his scholarly-pale cheeks, and tears, unconcealed this 
time, clouded his sight. He put out one uncertain hand, 
while Hobhouse made a noisy pretense of gathering to- 
gether the loose leaves under his hands. 

^Tt’s for six hundred pounds 1” he said huskily ; ^^six 
hundred pounds 1” 


CHAPTER V 


AN ANYTHINGARIAN 

Two hours later Gordon sat alone in the room, look- 
ing out on the softening sun-glare of St. James Street. 
In the chastened light the brilliant dark-auburn curls 
that clustered over his colorless face showed a richer 
brown and under their long black lashes his eyes had 
deepened their tint. Near-by, where Park Place opened, 
a fountain played, on whose bronze rim dusty sparrows 
preened and twittered. The clubs that faced the street 
were showing signs of life, and on the pave a news- 
boy, for the benefit of late-rising west-end dandies, was 
crying the papers. 

Gordon was waiting for Hobhouse. They were to 
sup together this last night. To-morrow he was to leave 
for Newstead Abbey and the uncomfortable ministra- 
tions of his eccentric and capricious mother, whom he 
had not yet seen. He had come back to his land and 
place to find that enmity had been busy envenoming 
his absence, and the taste of home had turned unsweet 
to his palate. 

As he sat now, however, Gordon had thrust bitterness 
from his mood. He was thinking with satisfaction of 
the copyhold he had transferred. He had always de- 
( 34 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


35 


dared that for what he wrote he would take no money. 
If these verses — ^the first in which he felt he had ex- 
pressed something of his real self — if these brought 
recompense, it was a fitting disposition he had made. 
He had paid an old debt to the man with the worn 
waistcoat and kindly, studious face — almost the only 
debt of its kind he owed in the world. 

The words with which Dallas had left him reclirred 
to him — '^God bless you!” 

^Toor old plodding Dallas!” he mused refiectively. 
^Tt’s curious how a man’s sense of gratitude drags up 
his religion — ^if he has any to drag up. He thinks now 
the Creator put into my heart to do that — doesn’t give 
himself a bit of credit for it !” 

He laughed reminiscently. 

don’t suppose he has seen six hundred pounds to 
spend since he bought that pony ! He has had a hard 
row to hoe all his life, and never did an ounce of harm 
to any living thing, yet at the first turn of good luck, 
he fairly oozes thankfulness to the Almighty. He is 
a churchman clear through. He believes in revealed 
religion — ^though no religion ever is revealed — and yet 
he doesn’t mistake theology for Christianity. He posi- 
tively doesn’t know the meaning of the word cant. Ah 
— ^there goes another type !” 

Gordon was looking at a square, mottle-faced man 
passing slowly on the opposite side of the street, carry- 
ing a bundle of leaflets from which now and then he 
drew to give to a passer-by. He was high-browed, with 
eyes that projected like an insect’s and were flattish in 
their orbits. He wore a ministerial cloak over his street 
costume. 


36 


THE CASTAWAY 


^^There’s Cassidy/^ he said to himself. ^^Dr. James 
Cassidy, on shore leave, distributing his little doc- 
trinal tracts. I remember him well. He is in the navy 
medical service, but it’s the grief of his life he can’t 
be a parson. He talked enough pedantry over the ship’s 
table of the Pylades, while I was coming home from 
Greece, to last me till the resurrection. He is as ardent 
a predestinarian as any Calvinistic dean in gaiters, and 
knows all the hackneyed catch-phrases of eternal pun- 
ishment. He has an itch for propaganda, and distributes 
his tracts, printed at his own expense, on the street-cor- 
ner for the glory of theology. He is the sort of Chris- 
tian who always writes damned with a dash. And yet, I 
wonder how much real true Christianity he has — Chris- 
tianity like Dallas’, I mean. I remember that scar on 
his cheek ; it stands for a thrashing he got once at Bom- 
bay from a deserting ensign named Trevanion — a youth 
I met in Greece afterward, and had cause to remember, 
by the way!” 

His eyes had darkened suddenly. His brows frowned, 
his firm white hand ran over his curls as though to 
brush away a disagreeable recollection. 

"Cassidy would travel half around the globe to find 
the deserter that thrashed him and land him in quod. 
That man would deserve it richly enough, but would 
Cassid3r’s act be for the good of the king’s service? No 
— for the satisfaction of James Cassidy. Is that Chris- 
tianity? Dallas never treasured an enmity in his life. 
Yet both of them believe the same doctrine, worship 
the same God, read the same Bible. Does man make 
his beliefs? Or do his beliefs make him? If his be- 
liefs make man, why are Dallas and Cassidy so differ- 


THE CASTAWAY 


37 


ent ? If man makes his beliefs, why should I not make 
my own ? I will be an Anythingarian, and leave dreams 
to Emanuel Swedenborg 

His gaze, that had followed the clerical figure till it 
passed out of sight, returned meditatively to the slaty 
white buildings opposite. 

^^Some people call me an atheist — I never could un- 
derstand why, though I prefer Confucius to the Ten 
Commandments and Socrates to St. Paul, — ^the two lat- 
ter happen to agree in their opinion of marriage, — 
and I don’t think eating bread or drinking wine from 
the hand of an earthly vicar will make me an inheritor 
of Heaven. Dallas would tell me not to reason, but to 
believe. You might as well tell a man not to wake but 
to sleep. Neither Cicero nor the Messiah could ever 
have altered the vote of a single lord of the bed-cham- 
ber! And then to bully with torments and all that! 
The menace of hell makes as many devils as the penal 
code makes villains. All cant — Methodistical cant — 
yet Dallas believes it. And both he and Cassidy belong 
to the same one of the seventy-two sects that are tear- 
ing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and 
hatred of each other — ^the sects that call men atheists be- 
cause the eternal why will creep into what they write. 
If it pleases the Church — I except Dallas — to damn me 
for asking questions, I shall be only one with some 
millions of scoundrels who, after all, seem as likely to 
be damned as ever. As for immortality, if people 
are to live, why die ? And our carcases, are they worth 
raising? I hope, if mine is, I shall have a better pair 
of legs than I have moved on these three-and-twenty 


38 


THE CASTAWAY 


years, or I shall be sadly behind in the squeeze into 
Paradise !” 

There was a knock at the door. He rose and opened 
it. It was Hobhouse. Gordon caught up his hat and 
they left the hotel together. 

As they crossed Park Place a woman, draggled and 
gin-besotted, strayed from some Thames-side stews, sat 
on the worn stone base of the fountain, leaning un- 
certainly against its bronze rim. Her swollen lids hid 
her eyes and one hand, palm up, was thrown out across 
her lap. Gordon drew a shilling from his pocket, and 
passing his arm in Hobhouse’s, laid it in the out- 
stretched hand. At the touch of the coin, the drab 
started up, looked at him stupidly an instant, then with 
a ribald yell of laughter she flung the shilling into the 
water and shambled across the square, mimicking, in 
a hideous sort of buffoonery, the lameness of his gait. 

Gordon’s face turned ashen. He walked on without 
a word, but his companion could feel his hand tremble 
against his sleeve. When he spoke, it was in a voice 
half-smothered, forbidding. 

^^Th^ old jeer !” he said. ^‘The very riffraff of the 
street fling it at me ! Yet I don’t know why they should 
spare that taunt; even my mother did not. ‘Lame brat !’ 
she called me once when I was a child.” He laughed, 
jarringly, harshly. ^^Why, only a few days before T 
sailed from England, in one of her flts of passion, she 
flung it at me. ‘May you be as ill-formed in mind as 
you are in body !’ Could they wish me worse than she ?” 

“Gordon!” expostulated the other. “Don’t! — ” 

He had no time to finish. A grizzled man in the 
dress of an upper servant was approaching them, his 


THE CASTAWAY 


39 


rubicund face bearing an unmistakable look of haste 
and concern. 

‘^Well, Fletcher?^’ inquired Gordon. 

“1 thought your lordship had gone out earlier. I 
have been inquiring for you at the clubs. This message 
has just come from Newstead.” 

His master took the letter and read it. A strange, 
slow, remorseful look overspread the passion on his face. 

‘‘^0 ill news, I hope,^^ ventured Hobhouse. 

Gordon made no reply. He crushed the letter into 
his pocket, turned abruptly and strode up St. James 
Street. 

^^His lordship’s mother died yesterday, Mr. Hob- 
house,” said the valet in a low voice. 

^^Good God!” exclaimed the other. ^^What a contre- 
temps/' 

A knot of loungers were seated under the chande- 
liers in the bow-window of White’s Club as Gordon 
passed on his way to the coach. Beau Brummell, ele- 
gant, spendthrift, in white great-coat and blue satin 
cravat exhaling an odor of eau de jasmin, lifted a lan- 
guid glass to his eye. 

^T’ll go something handsome 1” cried he ; thought 

he was in Greece !” 

^^He’s the young whelp of a peer who made such a 
dust with that Satire he wrote,” Lord Petersham in- 
formed his neighbor. ^'Hero of the sack story I told 
you. Took the title from his great-uncle, the madman 
who killed old Chaworth in that tavern duel. House 
of Lords tried him for murder, you know. Used to 
train crickets and club them over the head with straws \ 


40 


THE CASTAWAY 


all of them left the house in a body the day he died. 
Devilish queer story! Who’s the aged party with the 
portmanteaus ? V alet ?” 

^^Yes/’ asserted some one. ^^The old man was here 
a while ago trying to find Gordon — with bad news. His 
lordship’s mother is dead.” 

‘^Saw her once at Newstead Abbey,” yawned Brum- 
mell, wearily, dusting his cuffs. ‘^Corpulent termagant 
and gave George no end of a row. He used to call her 
his ^maternal war-whoop.’ My own parents — ^poor good 
people! — died long ago,” he added refiectively; “ — cut 
their throats eating peas with a knife.” 


CHAPTEE YI 


WHAT THE DEAD MAY KNOW 

Gordon was alone in the vehicle, for Fletcher rode 
outside. He set his face to the fogged pane, catching 
the panorama of dark hedges, gouged gravelly runnels 
and stretches of murky black, with occasional instan- 
taneous sense of detail — dripping bank, sodden rhodo- 
dendron and mildewed masonry — vivid in a dull, yellow, 
soundless flare of July lightning. A gauze of unbroken 
grayness, a straggling light — ^the lodge. A battle- 
mented wall plunging out of the darkness — and Gordon 
saw the Abbey, its tiers of ivied cloisters uninhabited 
since Henry the Eighth battered the old pile to ruin, its 
gaunt and unsightly forts built for some occupant’s 
whim, and the wavering, fog-wreathed lake reflecting 
lighted windows. This was Newstead in which the 
bearers of his title had lived and died, the gloomy seat 
of an ancient house stained by murder and insanity, 
of which he was the sole representative. 

What was he thinking as he sat in the gloomy dining- 
room, with Eushton, the footman he had trained to his 
own service, standing behind his chair? Of his mother 
first of all. He had never, even as a child, distinguished 
a sign of real tenderness in her moments of tempos- 
( 41 ) 


43 


THE CASTAWAY 


tuous caresses. His maturer years had grown to regard 
her with a half-scornful, half good-humored tolerance. 
He had shrugged at her tempers, dubbing her ^^The 
Honorable Kitty’^ or his ^^Amiable Alecto.^^ His letters 
to her had shown only a nice sense of filial duty; many 
of them began with ^^Dear Madam”; more had been 
signed simply with his name. Yet now he felt an aching 
hope that in her seclusion she had not seen the unkind- 
est of the stories of him. His half-sister — ^now on her 
way from the north of England — absorbed with her 
family cares, would have missed the brunt of the at- 
tacks ; his mother had been within their range. He re- 
called with a pang that she had treasured with a degree 
of pride a single review of his earliest book which had 
not joined in the sneering chorus. 

He pushed back his chair, dismissed the footman, and 
alone passed to the hall and ascended the stair. At 
the turn of the balustrade a shaded lamp drowsed like a 
monster glow-worm. In his own room a low fire burned, 
winking redly from the coronetted bed-posts, and a 
lighted candle stood on the dressing-table. He looked 
around the familiar apartment a moment uncertainly, 
then crossed to a carved cabinet above a writing-desk 
and took therefrom a bottle of claret. The cabinet 
had belonged to his father, dead many years before. 
Gordon thought of him as he stood with the bottle in 
his hand, staring fixedly at the dull, carved ebony of 
the swinging door. 

His father ! ^^Mad J ack Gordon” the world had called 
him when he ran away with the Marchioness of Car- 
mathen to break her heart! Handsome he had been 
still when he married for her money the heiress of 


THE CASTAWAY 


4S 


Gight, Gordon’s mother. A stinging memory recalled 
the only glimpse he had ever had of that father — a tall 
man in uniform on an Aberdeen street, looking critically 
at a child with a lame leg. 

Gordon winced painfully. He felt with a sharper 
agony the sensitive pang of the cripple, the shame of 
misshapenness that all his life had clung like an old- 
man-of-the-sea. It had not only stung his childhood; 
it had stolen from him the romance of his youth — ^the 
one gleam that six years ago had died. 

Six years! For a moment time fell away like rot- 
ten shale from about a crystal. The room, the wine- 
cabinet, faded into a dim background, and on this, as 
if on a theater curtain, dissolving pictures painted them- 
selves flame-like. 

He was back in his Harrow days now, at home for 
his last vacation. 

'^George,” his mother had remarked one day, looking 
up from a letter she was reading, ^T’ve some news for 
you. Take out your handkerchief, for you will need it.” 

^^Konsense! What is it?” 

^^Mary Chaworth is married.” 

^Ts that all?” he had replied coldly; but an expres- 
sion, peculiar, impossible to describe, had passed over 
his face. He had never afterward seen her or spoken 
her name. 

^^Mary!” he murmured, and his hand set down the 
bottle on the table. Love — such love as his verses told 
of— he had come to consider purely subjective, a mirage, 
a simulacrum to which actual life possessed no counter- 
part. Yet at that moment he was feeling the wraith of 


44 


THE CASTAWAY 


an old thrill, his nostrils smelling a perfume like a dead 
pansy’s ghost. 

He withdrew his hand from the bottle and his fingers 
olenched. How it hurt him — the sudden stab! For 
memory had played him a trick ; it had dragged a voice 
out of the past. It was her voice — ^her words that she 
had uttered in a careless sentence meant for other ears, 
one that through those years had tumbled and reechoed 
in some under sea-cavem of his mind — you think 
I could ever care for that lame hoyf* 

He smiled grimly. She had been right. Hature had 
set him apart, made him a loup-garou, a solitary hob- 
goblin. He had been unclubbable, sauvage, even at 
Cambridge. And yet he had had real friendships there ; 
one especially. 

Gordon’s free hand fumbled for his fob and his fin- 
gers closed on a little cornelian heart. It had been a 
keepsake from his college classmate, Matthews, drowned 
in the muddy waters of the Cam. 

He released the bottle hurriedly, strode to the window 
and flung it open. A gust of rain struck his face and 
spluttered in the candle, and the curtain flapped like 
the wing of some ungainly bird. Out in the dark, be- 
neath a clump of larches, glimmered whitely the monu- 
ment he had erected to ‘^Boatswain/’ his Newfoundland. 
'The animal had gone mad. 

^^Some curse hangs over me and mine !” he muttered. 
'"I never could keep alive even a dog that I liked or that 
liked me!” 

A combined rattle and crash behind him made him 
’turn. The wind had blown shut the door of the cabi- 
net with a smart bang, and a yellow object, large and 


THE CASTAWAY 


45 


round, had toppled from its shelf, fallen and rolled to 
his very feet. 

He started back, his nerves for the instant shaken. It 
was a skull, mottled like polished tortoise-shell, mounted 
in dull silver as a drinking cup. He had unearthed the 
relic years before with a heap of stone coffins amid the 
rubbish of the Abbey’s ruined priory — ^grim reminder 
of some old friar — and its mounting had been his own 
fancy. He had forgotten its very existence. 

Now, as it lay supine, yet intrusive, the symbol at 
one time of lastingness and decay, it filled him with a 
painful fascination. 

Picking it up, he set it upright on the desk, seized 
the bottle, knocked off its top against the marble man* 
tel and poured the fantastic goblet full. 

"Death and life !” he mused. "One feeds the other,, 
each in its turn. Life! yet it should not be too long; 
I have no conception of any existence which duration 
would not render tiresome. How else fell the angels? 
They were immortal, heavenly and happy. It is the 
lastingness of life that is terrible; I see no horror in a 
dreamless sleep.” 

He put out his hand to the goblet, but withdrew it. 

"No—wait!” he said, and seating himself at the 
desk, he seized a pen. The lines he wrote, rapidly and 
with scarcely an alteration, were to live for many a 
long year — ^index fingers pointing back to that dark 
mood that consumed him then : 

‘"Start not — nor deem my spirit fled:, 

In me behold the only skull, 

From which, unlike a living head, 

Whatever flows is never dull. 


THE CASTAWAY 


I lived, I loved, I quaffed, like thee: 

I died: let earth my bones resign. 

Fill up — thou canst not injure me; 

« The worm hath fouler lips than thine. 

Better to hold the sparkling grape. 

Than nurse the earth-worm’s slimy brood;' 

And circle in the goblet’s shape 
The drink of gods, than reptile’s food. 

Quaff while thou canst: another race. 

When thou and thine, like me, are sped. 

May rescue thee from earth’s embrace. 

And rhyme and revel with the dead.” 

He repeated the last stanza aloud and raised the gob- 
let in both hands. 

^‘Ehyming and revelling — ^what else counts ? To 
drink the wine of youth to the dregs and then — ^good 
night! Is there anything beyond? Who knows? He 
who can not tell ! Who tells us there is ? He who does 
not know !” 

Did the dead know ? 

He set the wine down, pushing it from him, sprang 
up, seized the candle and entered the room on the other 
side of the corridor. The bed-curtains were drawn close 
and a Bible lay open on the night-stand. He wondered 
with a kind of impersonal pity if the book had held 
■comfort for her at the last. 

He held the candle higher so its rays lighted the 
page: But the Lord shall give thee there a trembling 
heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind. . . . 
In the morning thou shalt say. Would God it were even! 
and at even thou shalt say. Would God it were morning! 

It stared at him plainly in black letters, an age-old 


THE CASTAWAY 


47 


agony of wretchedness. Had this been the keynote of 
her lonely, fitful, vehement life? Had years of misery 
robbed her — as it had robbed him, too? A distressed 
doubt, like a dire finger of apprehension, touched him; 
he put out his hand and drew aside the curtains. 

Looking, he shuddered. Death had lent her its mys- 
tery, its ineffaceable dignity. He recognized it with 
a new and inexplicable feeling, like rising from the 
grave. Back of the placid look, in abeyance, in the stir- 
lessness of the unringed hands — she had lost her wed- 
ding-ring years ago — some quality, strange, unintimate, 
lay confronting him. He remembered his words to Hob- 
house in the street — ^words that had not been cold on his 
lips when he read Fletcher’s message. Ever since, they 
had lain rankling like a raw burn in some crevice of his 
brain. ^^Lame brat!” And yet, beneath her frantic 
rages, under the surface he had habitually disregarded, 
what if in her own way she had really loved him 1 

A clutching pain took possession of him, a sense of 
physical sickness and anguish. He dropped the cur- 
tain, and stumbled from the room, down the long stair, 
calling for the footman. 

“Eushton,” he shouted, ^^get the muffles ! Let us have 
a bout like the old times.” He threw off his coat, 
pushed the chairs aside and bared his arms. ‘‘The 
gloves, Kushton, and be quick about it !” 

The footman hesitated, a half-scared expression in 
his look. 

^^Never fear,” said Gordon, and laughed — a tighten- 
ing laugh that strained the cords of his throat. "Put 
them on ! That’s right ! What are you staring at ? Do 
you think she will hear you? Hot she! Put up your 


48 


THE CASTAWAY 


hands — so ! Touched, by the Lord ! Hot up to your old 
style, Kushton! Yon never used to spar so villainously. 
You will disgrace the fancy. Ah-h !” And he knocked 
him sprawling. 

Eushton scrambled to his feet as the housekeeper en- 
tered, dismay upon her mask-like relic of a face. Gordon 
was very white and both noticed that his eyes were full 
of tears. 

Long after midnight, when the place was quiet, 
the housekeeper heard an unaccustomed sound issuing 
from the chamber where the dead woman lay. She 
took a light and entered. The candle had burned out, 
and she saw Gordon sitting in the dark beside the bed. 

He spoke in a broken voice : 

^^Oh, Mrs. Muhl,” he said, ^^she was my mother! 
After all, one can have but one in this world, and I 
have only just found it out P 


CHAPTEE VII 

THE YOUTH IN FLEET FKISON 

Behind the closed shutters of the book-shop which 
bore the sign of ^^The Juvenile Library/^ in the musty 
room where George Gordon had burned the errant copies 
of his ubiquitous Satire, old William Godwin sat reading 
by a guttering candle, Liv/s Eoman History in the 
original. It was his favorite book, and in the early even- 
ings, when not writing his crabbed column for the 
Courier, or caustic diatribes for the reviews, he was apt 
to be reading it. A sound in the living-room above 
drew his eyes from the black-letter page. 

^^Jane!^^ he called morosely — "Jane Clermont!’^ 

A lagging step came down the stair, and a girl en- 
tered, black-eyed, creole in effect. Her cheeks held the 
flame of the wild-cherry leaf. 

^n^here is your sister?’^ 

"I have no sister 

The old man struck the table with his open hand. 
"Where is Mary, I say?^^ 

"At the door.’^ 

and see what she is doing.^^ 

( 49 ) 


50 


THE CASTAWAY 


The girl stood still, regarding her stepfather with a 
look that under its beauty had a sullen half-contempt. 

^^Wliy don’t you do as I tell you ?” 

not going to be a spy for you, even if you did 
marry my mother. I’m tired of it.” 

The anger on the old man’s face harshened. ^Tf you 
were my own flesh and blood,” he said sternly, ‘T would 
flog that French impudence of yours to death. As long 
as you eat my bread, you will obey me.” 

She looked at him with covert mockery on her full 
lips. 

‘T’m not a child any longer,” she said as she turned 
flauntingly away; could earn my bread easier than 
by dusting tumble-down book-shelves. Do you think I 
don’t know that ?” 

To William Godwin this deflant untutored girl had 
been a thorn in the side — a perpetual slur and affront to 
the irksome discipline he laid upon his own pliant Mary, 
the child of that first wife whose loss had warped his 
manhood. How he saw her as a live danger, a flagrant 
menace whose wildness would infect his own daughter. 
It was this red-lipped vixen who was teaching her the 
spirit of disobedience ! 

He raised his voice and called sharply : ^Tdary !” 

There was no answer, and he shuffled down the shabby 
hall to the street door. The old man glowered at the 
slender, beardless figure of the youth who stood with 
her — ^the brown, long coat with curling lamb’s-wool 
collar and cuffs, its pockets bulging with mysterious 
books. In a senile rage, he ordered his daughter indoors. 

Passers-by stopped to stare at the object of his rancor, 
standing uncertainly in the semi-dusk, a brighter ap- 


THE CASTAWAY 


51 


parition, with luminous eyes and extravagant locks. 
Words came thickly to the old man; he launched into 
invective, splenetic and intemperate, at which the listen- 
ers tittered. 

As it chanced, a pedestrian heard the name he 
mouthed — a man sharp-featured and ill dressed. With 
a low whistle he drew a soiled slip of paper from his 
pocket and consulted it by a street lamp, his grimy 
forefinger running down the list of names it contained. 

“1 thought so. IVe a knack for names,” he muttered, 
and shouldered through the bystanders. 

^^Hot so fast, yoimg master,” he said, laying his hand 
on the youth’s arm ; ^^t’other’s the way to the Fleet.” 

The other drew back with a gesture of disgust. “The 
Fleet !” he echoed. 

“Aye,” said the bailiff, winking to the crowd; “the 
pretty jug for folk as spend more than they find in 
pocket; with a nice grating to see your friends so gen- 
teel like.” 

Breaking from her father’s hand, the girl in the door- 
way ran out with fear in her blue eyes. 

^^Oh, where are you taking him ?” she cried. 

The fellow smirked. “I’m just going to show his 
honor to a hotel I know, till he has time to see his pal 
Dellevelly of Golden Square to borrow a tidy eighteen 
pound ten, which a bookseller not so far off will be 
precious glad to get.” 

“Eighteen pounds!” gasped the youth, with a hys- 
teric laugh. “Debtors’ prison for only eighteen pounds ! 
But I have the books still — ^he can have them back.” 

“After you’ve done with ^em, eh?” said the bailiff. 


THE CASTAWAY 


*^0h, I know, your young gentlemen’s ways. Come 
along.” 

"Father!” cried the girl, indignantly, as the bailiff 
dropped a heavy grasp on the lamb’s-wool collar. 
^^ou’U not let them take Shelley. You’ll wait for the 
money, father.” 

"Go into the house 1” thundered the old man. "He’s 
a good-for-nothing vagabond, I tell you!” He thrust 
her back, and the slammed door shut between her and 
the youth standing in the bailiff’s clutch, half-wonder- 
ingly and disdainfully, like a bright-eyed, restless fox 
amid sour grapes. 

"Go to your room !” commanded her father, and the 
girl slowly obeyed, dashing away her tears, while the old 
bookseller went back to the cluttered shop and his read- 
ing of Livy’s Eoman History. 

In the chamber the girl entered, Jane Clermont looked 
up half-scornfully. 

"I heard it all,” she burst; "you are a little fool to 
take it — scolding you like a child, and before all those 
people !” 

Mary opened a bureau drawer and took out a small 
rosewood box containing her one dearest possession. 
As she stood with her treasure in her hand, Jane jumped 
to her feet. 

"I’ve borne it as long as I can myself,” she cried under 
her breath. "I’m going to run away before I am a fort- 
night older.” 

"Eun away? Where?” 

Jane had begun to dance noiselessly on tiptoe with 
swift bacchante movements. "I’m going to be an ac- 


THE CASTAWAY 


53 


tress/^ she confided, as she stood at a pirouette, ^TVe 
been to see Mr. Sheridan — the great Mr. Sheridan — 
and he’s promised to get me a trial in a real part at 
Drury Lane !” She paused, struck with the determina- 
tion in the other’s face. ^‘What are you going to do ?” 

"I’m going to Shelley.” 

^^Good ! I’ll go with you. But you have no money. 
How can you help him ?” 

Mary held out the little box. 

^TTour mother’s brooch !” cried Jane. "Do you really 
care as much as that for him ?” — a little satirically. 

Her companion was dressing for the street with rapid, 
uncertain fingers. ^Tt’s all I have,” she answered. 

They sat in silence till they heard the outer door 
bolted and knew the old man below had gone to his own 
room. Then they stole softly down the creaking stair, 
undid the outer door cautiously and went out into the 
evening bustle. 

The pavements were crowded, and Mary clung to her 
companion’s arm, but Jane walked nonchalantly, her 
dark eyes snapping with adventure. Not a few turned 
to gaze at her piquant beauty. To one whose way led in 
the same direction it brought a thought of a distant land. 

"In a Suliote shawl she might be a maid of Misso- 
longhi !” mused George Gordon, as he strode across Fleet 
market behind the two girls. "Greece ! I wonder when 
I shall see it again !” 

A shade of melancholy was in his face as he walked 
on, but not discontent. The resentment of his London 
home-coming and the desolation of that first black night 
at Newstead he had overcome. With the companionship 
of his sister and in the calm freshness of frosty lake and 


54 


THE CASTAWAY 


rolling wind-washed moor he had recovered some of the 
buoyant spirits so suddenly stunned by the impact of 
the slanders that had met him. The London papers he 
had left unopened, from a sensitive dread of seeing the 
recital of his mother’s well-known eccentricities, which 
her death might furnish excuse for recalling. His new 
book, whose stanzas stood like mental mile-posts of his 
journey, had almost finished its progress through the 
press. In its verses he hoped to stand for something 
more than the petty cavilling of personal paragraphists. 
It was to his publisher’s he was bound this night when 
that wistful thought of the shores he best loved had 
shadowed his mood. 

Crossing the open space on which faced the dark brick 
front and barred windows of the Fleet Prison, he saw 
the two girlish forms pause before its dismal entrance, 
where stood the shirt-sleeved warden, pipe in mouth. 
What errand could have brought them there unaccom- 
panied at such an hour, he wondered. 

Just then the clock of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West be- 
gan a ponderous stroke, and the warden knocked the 
ashes from his pipe. 

‘‘Eight o’clock,” he announced gruffly. “Prison’s 
closed.” 

A cry of dismay fell from Mary’s lips — a cry freighted 
with tears. “Then we can’t get poor Bysshe !” 

Gordon turned back and approached the dingy portal. 
“I have a fancy to see the inside of the old rookery, 
warden,” he said. “Perhaps these visitors may enter 
with me.” His hand was in his pocket and a jingle 
caught the warden’s acute ear. The gruff demeanor of 
the custodian merged precipitately into the obsequious. 


THE CASTAWAY 


55 


He pushed open the gate with alacrity and preceded 
them into the foul area of the prison. 

Mary threw Gordon a quick glance of gratitude as she 
passed into the warden^s office — ^to return without the 
little rosewood box. Across the look had flitted a shud- 
der at the shouts and oaths that tainted the inclosure, 
and as she emerged he caught the gleam of relief with 
which she saw him still in the court. 

A moment later the bailiff, who had figured in the 
scene before Godwin’s shop, was leading the way along 
a noisome gallery. It was littered with refuse of vege- 
table and provision-men who cried their wares all day 
up and down. At one side gaped a coffee-house, at the 
other an ordinary, both reeking with stale odors and 
tobacco-smoke, and a noisy club was meeting in the tap- 
room. Laughter and the click of glasses floated in the 
air, a suffocating atmosphere of tawdry boisterousness. 

Jane Clermont stole more than one sidelong glance 
as Gordon’s uneven step followed. At length the bailiff 
paused and unlocked a barred door. Mary knocked, but 
there was no answer; she pushed the door open and the 
girls entered. 

From his station in the background, Gordon saw a 
dingy chamber, possessing as furniture only a cot, a 
chair, and a narrow board mantel, on which a candle 
^was burning, stuck upright in its own tallow. Standing 
before this breast-high impromptu table, a pamphlet 
spread open upon it, his shoulders stooped, his eyes de- 
vouring the page, was the room’s solitary occupant. He 
had thrown off the long coat with the lamb’s-wool trim- 
ming, his collar was open leaving his throat unfettered, 
and his long locks hung negligently about his face. 


56 


THE castaway; 


^^Bysshe !” cried Mary, ecstatically. 

The figure by the mantel turned, fiinging back his 
tumbled hair as if to toss away his abstraction. 

^^Mary !” he echoed, and sprang forward. ^^What are 
you doing here ?” 

^‘WeWe come for you. The debt is cancelled. To 
think of your being shut up here!’^ she said with a 
shiver, as a burst of noises rose from the court below. 

^Tancelled!” he repeated with a hesitating laugh. 
‘TTour father would better have let me stay, Mary. I 
shall be just as bad again in a month. I couldnT re- 
sist buying a book if it meant the gallows 

She did not undeceive him, but handed him his 
great-coat, and gathered the volumes tossed on to the 
couch to stuff into its bulging pockets. 

J ane had been scrutinizing the room. ^^What’s that 
she inquired, pointing to a plate of food which sat on the 
far end of the mantel, as though it had been impatiently 
pushed aside. 

The youth colored uneasily. ^^Why, I suppose that 
was my supper,^^ he said shamefacedly; ‘T must have 
forgotten to eat it.^^ 

Jane laughed, picked up the pamphlet for which the 
meal had been forgotten, and read the title aloud. 
« ^Twelve Butchers for a Jury and a Jeffreys for a 
Judge. An Appeal against the Pending Frame-Breakers 
Bill to legalize the Murder of the Stocking- Weavers. By 
Percy Bysshe Shelley !’ ” 

‘^Frame-Breakers she finished disdainfully. “Stock- 
ing-Weavers I” 

Shelley’s delicate face flushed as he folded the pam- 
phlet. 


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57 


"Are they not men ?” he exclaimed. "And being men, 
have they no natural rights? Is British law to shoot 
them down like wild beasts for the defense of their 
livelihood? Oh, if I were only a peer, with a voice in 
Parliament He spoke with fierce emphasis, but in 
tone soft, vibrating and persuasive — a sustained, song- 
like quality in it. 

"Percy Bysshe Shelley!” Gordon’s mind recited the 
name wonderingly. He remembered a placard he had 
seen in a book-shop window: "For writing the which’ 
he stands expelled from University College, Oxford.” So 
this was the heir to a baronetcy, the author of "Queen 
Mab,” the stripling iconoclast who had laughed at ful- 
minating attorney-generals, had fied to Lynmouth beach 
— ^where he had spent his days making little wooden 
boxes, inclosed in resined bladders, weighted with lead 
and equipped with tiny mast and sail, and had sent 
them, filled with his contraband writings, out on the 
rollers of the Atlantic in the hope that they might reach 
some free mind on the Irish shore or on some ocean brig. 

Gordon left his post and went slowly down the stair, 
past the blackened office, wherein the warden sat ad- 
miringly fingering the brooch that had wiped out a debt 
to old William Godwin the bookseller, and into the 
street. 

The words of the youth he had seen sounded in his 
brain : "If I were only a peer, with a voice in Parlia- 
ment I” 

That voice was his. When had he used it for his 
fellow-man ? 


CHAPTER VIII 


A SAVAGE SPUE 

John Murray, anax of publishers, sat that evening in 
his shop in Fleet Street. He was in excellent humor, 
having dined both wisely and well. His hair was sparse 
above a smooth-shaven, oval face, in which lurked good- 
humor and the wit which brought to his drawing-room 
the most brilliant men of literary London, as his genius 
as a publisher had given him the patronage of the great- 
est peers of the kingdom, and even of the prince regent. 
His black coat was of the plainest broadcloth and his 
neck-cloth of the finest linen. Dallas sat opposite, his 
scholarly face keen and animated. The frayed waist- 
coat was no longer in evidence, and the worn hat had 
given place to a new broad brim. 

‘TTes,^^ said the man of books, ^Ve shall formally pub- 
lish to-morrow. I wrote his lordship, asking him to 
come up to town, to urge him to eliminate several of the 
stanzas in case we reprint soon. They will only make 
him more enemies. He has enough now,^^ he added rue- 
fully. 

^TTou still think as well of it 

The publisher pushed back his glasses with enthu- 
siasm. ^Tt is splendid — ^unique.^^ He pulled out a desk- 
drawer and took therefrom a printed volume, poising 
it proudly, as a father dandles his first-born, and, turn- 
( 58 ) 


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59 


ing its pages, with lifted forefinger and rolling voice, 
read: 

“Fair Greece I sad relic of departed worth! 

Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great! 

Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth. 

And long accustomed bondage uncreate ? 

Not such thy sons who whilom did await, 

The hopeless warriors of the willing doom, 

In bleak Thermopylm’s sepulchral strait — 

Oh I who that gallant spirit shall resume. 

Leap from Eurotas’ banks, and call thee from the tomb? 

Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild ; 

Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields. 

Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled. 

And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields ; 

There the blithe bee hies fragrant fortress builds. 

The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air ; 

Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds. 

Still in his beam Mendeli’s marbles glare ; 

Art, glory, freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. 

Hereditary bondsmen ! Know ye not 
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow ? 
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought. 

Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No! 

True, they may lay your proud despoiler low. 

But not for you will freedom’s altars flame. 

Shades of the Helots ' triumph o’er your foe ! 

Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same; 

Thy glorious day is o’er, but not thine years of shame.” 

He broke off abruptly. “The pamphleteers have hee& 
busy since he landed,’^ he admitted, a trace of shrewd- 
ness edging his tone, “but the abuse seems to have 
dulled now. I have been waiting for that to issue.” 

“His lordship, sir,” announced a clerk, and the pro- 
prietor sprang to his feet to greet his visitor. 


60 


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Gordon’s eyes lighted with pleasure as they fell on 
Dallas, noting the change the few months of relief from 
the galling pressure of poverty had wrought in the fea- 
tures no less than the attire. ^^Are the types ready?” 
he asked the publisher. 

^^Yes, my lord. We distribute to-morrow. I have 
marked a few stanzas, however, that I hesitate to in- 
clude in a further edition. Here they are. You will 
guess my reason.” 

The other looked, his eyes reading, but his mind 
thinking further than the page. 

“London! Right well thou know’st the hour of prayer; 

Then thy spruce citizen, washed artisan 
And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air.” 

The lines were bitter indeed ! They had been written 
when he was still smarting under the lash of his earlier 
critics, in the first months of his joumeyings, before 
the great wind of travel had swept his mind clear and 
sweet for the latter harmonies of his poesy. In them 
lay the hurt sneer of a personal resentment — ^the re- 
sentment that had been in his soul when he sailed from 
England; that had sprung alive again on his return, 
when he learned that his enemies had employed his 
absence to bespatter his name with lying tales. 

Yet that was past. He had. oast it behind him. And 
should he carry the old spirit into thfis better and nobler 
work, to deflect his message from its significance into 
cheaper channels of abuse? His thought recurred to 
the youth in the bare room of the Fleet. Even there, 
in a debtors’ prison, Shelley had forgot his own plight, 
and sunk individual resentment in desire for wider 


THE CASTAWAY 


61 


justice! Should he he less big in tolerance than that 
youth? So he asked himself, as the publisher casually 
fluttered the leaves of an uncut review which the clerk 
had laid on his desk. 

All at once John Murray’s eyes stopped, fixed on a 
page. He made an exclamation of irritation and cha- 
grin, and pushed it out toward Gordon. It was a fresh 
copy of the Scourge, and the leader Gordon read, while 
the publisher paced the floor with nervously angry 
strides, was the one in which had been steeped the 
anon3rmous venom of William Godwin the bookseller — 
a page whose caption was his own name: 

“It may be asked whether to be a simple citizen is more 
disgraceful than to be the illegitimate descendant of a 
murderer; whether to labor in an honorable profession be 
less worthy than to waste the property of others in vulgar 
debauchery; whether to be the son of parents of no title 
be not as honorable as to be the son of a profligate father 
and a mother of demoniac temper, and, finally, whether a 
simple university career be less indicative of virtue than 
to be held up to the derision and contempt of his fellow 
students, as a scribbler of doggerel and a bear-leader, to be 
hated for repulsiveness of manners and shunned by every 
man who would not be deemed a profligate without wit and 
trifling without elegance.” 

A cold dead look of mingled pain and savagery grew 
on his face as he read. Then he sprang up and went to 
the door. Behind him Dallas had seized the review and 
was reading it with indignation. The publisher was 
still pacing the floor : ^^What an unfortunate advertise- 
ment !” he was muttering. 

Gordon stared out into the lamp-lighted street. The 


62 


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bitter malignancy which had spared not even the grave 
in its slander ; numbed and maddened him. His breath 
came hard and a mist was before his eyes. Opposite 
the shop loomed the blackened front of the old church 
of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West; as he stood, the two 
wooden figures of wild men on the clock which projected 
over the street struck the hour with their clubs, and a 
late newsboy passed crying tiredly: News and Chron- 
icle! All about the Erame-Breakers shot in Notting- 
ham V’ 

The volume the publisher had given him was still in 
Gordon’s hand. He turned into the room and fiung it 
on the desk. 

^^No,” he said with harsh bluntness. ^^Not a line shall 
be altered! If every syllable were a rattlesnake and 
every letter a pestilence, they should not be expunged ! 
Let those who can not swallow, chew it. I will have 
none of your damned cutting and slashing, Murray. I 
will battle my way against them all, like a porcupine !” 

Then he wheeled and plunged into the clack and 
babble of Fleet Street’s pedestrians. 

London would be reading this effusion when his book 
appeared to-morrow — reading it and talking about it. 
^^The curs!” he said to himself, as he walked fiercely 
down the Strand. 

The cry of the newsboy ahead came back to him like 
a dulled refrain. He turned into Whitehall at Charing 
Cross, and looked up to find himself opposite Melbourne 
House. He remembered suddenly the clear-eyed girl to 
whom he had offered his Satire and whose coin was still 
in his waistcoat pocket; she had said ^'Melbourne House” 


THE CASTAWAY 


63 


that day to the coachman. He wondered with a curious 
levity whether she would read the Scourge. 

Before the Houses of Parliament stood a double line 
of carriages. 

'TPs the debate in the Lords on the Frame-Breakers 
bill/^ he heard one passer-by inform another, as he 
stared frowning at the high Gothic entrance. That was 
the measure against which Shelley^s pamphlet had been 
written. 

The pain was dulling and the old unyielding devil of 
challenge and fight was struggling uppermost. " 'The 
illegitimate descendant of a murderer !’ — Gordon mut- 
tered — " 'a scribbler of doggerel and a bear-leader 

Then suddenly he raised his head. His eyes struck 
fire like gray fiint. "I am a peer/^ he said through his 
teeth, and strode through the door which he had never 
entered in his life, but once. 

An hour later there was a sensation in John Mur- 
ray's shop, where Dallas still sat. It was furnished by 
Sheridan, who came in taking snufi and shaking his 
gray head with delight. 

"Heard the news?’^ he cried, chuckling. "George 
Gordon just made a great speech — ^best speech by a lord 
since the Lord knows when ! I was in the gallery with 
Lady Melbourne and Lady Caroline Lamb. He opposed 
the Frame-Breakers bill. They say it means the death 
of the measure. You should have seen the big-wigs fiock 
to offer congratulations ! Why, even the Lord Chancel- 
lor came down from the woolsack to shake hands with 
him !’^ He paused out of breath, with a final "What d’ye 
think of that 


64 


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well !” ejaculated the publisher, taking off his 
glasses and polishing them with vigor. He looked at 
Dallas. 

^^Yhat an unfortunate advertisement!’^ quoth that 
gentleman, pulling his nose. ^^Eh ?” 

John Murray brought his fist down on the desk with 
a force that made the ink-well leap. ^^By the foot of 
Pharaoh!” he swore, ^Ve’ll take advantage of it; it 
will discount that attack in the Scourge. The papers 
have their copies of the book already. I’ll send them 
word. We’ll not wait till to-morrow. We’ll issue to- 
night !” 

He rang the bell sharply and gave a clerk hurried 
orders which in a few moments made the office a scene 
of confusion. 

When Lady Melbourne entered Melbourne House 
with her daughter-in-law that evening — about the time 
a swarm of messengers were departing from the Fleet 
Street shop carrying packages of books addressed to the 
greatest houses of London — she found her stately niece, 
Annabel Milbanke, reading in the drawing-room. 

Lady Caroline’s eyes were very bright as she threw off 
her wraps. She went to the piano and played softly — 
long dissolving arpeggios that melted into a rich minor 
chord. Presently she began to sing the same Greek air 
that she had sung once before with a pathos that had 
surprised and stirred even the colder, calculate Annabel. 

^^Caro, what is that ?” asked Lady Melbourne, unclasp- 
ing her sables before the fireplace. The singer did not 
hear her. 

^Tt’s a song Mr. Hobhouse sent her when he was 
traveling in the East,” Annabel volunteered. 


THE CASTAWAY 


65 


Lady Melbourne’s thoughts were not wholly on the 
song. She had seen the book her niece had been reading 
— ^it was George Gordon’s long famous Satire. She 
picked it up, noting the name on the title-page with ap- 
proval. She had been pondering since she left the ladies’ 
gallery of the House of Lords, and her thoughts had 
concerned themselves intimately with its author, the 
young peer whose maiden speech had challenged such 
surprise and admiration. His name went perpetually 
accompanied by stories of eccentricities and wild life at 
college, of tamed bears and hidden orgies at Newstead 
with Paphian dancing girls, of a secret establishment 
at Brighton, of adventures and liaisons the most reck- 
less in cities of the Orient. Yet he had stanch support- 
ers, too. 

Annabel,” she said presently, and with singular em- 
phasis, “George Gordon is in town. He spoke in Parlia- 
ment this evening. I am going to ask him to dinner 
here to-morrow — to meet you.” 

The refrain Lady Caroline was singing broke queerly 
in the middle, and her fingers stumbled on the keys. 
The others did not see the expression that slipped 
swiftly across her face, the rising fiush, the indrawn, 
bitten under lip, nor did they catch the undertone in 
her laugh as she ran up the stair. 

In her own room she unlocked a metal frame that 
stood on her dressing table. It held a pencil portrait, 
begged long before from Hobhouse. A vivid, conscious 
flush was in her cheeks as she looked at it. 

“For a woman of fire and dreams!” she murmured. 
“Hot for a thing of snow ! Never — never I” 


CHAPTEE IX 


GORDON WAKES AND FINDS HIMSELF FAMOUS 

The sharp jostle of the pavement; the rattle of the 
crossings; the ^This way, m’lord!” of dodging link- 
boys and the hoarse warning of the parochial watch to 
reckless drivers; street lamps flaring redly in the raw 
and heavy night; the steaming tap-rooms along the 
Thames ; the cnt-throat darkness and the dank smell of 
the slow turgid current under London bridge. Still 
Gordon walked while the hours dragged till the traffic 
ebbed to midnight’s lull — on and on, without purpose or 
direction. It was dawn before he entered his lodgings, 
fagged and unstrung, with blood pumping and quiver- 
ing in his veins like quicksilver. 

He let himself in with his own key. The door of the 
ante-chamber which his valet occupied was ajar. 
Fletcher had been waiting for his master; he was 
dressed and seated in a chair, but his good-humored, 
oleaginous face was smoothed in slumber. 

Gordon went into his sitting-room, poured out a half 
goblet of cognac and drank it to the last drop, feeling 
gratefully its dull glow and grudging release from 
nervous tension. 

His memory of his speech was a sort of rough-drawn 
composite impression whose salient points were color 
( 66 ) 


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67 


and movement: the wide groined roof, the peaked and 
gilded throne, the crimson woolsack, the long, red 
morocco sofas set thickly, the rustle in the packed gal- 
leries, and peers leaning in their seats to speak in low 
tones with their neighbors. 

The majority there had not known him, but his pale- 
ness, his beauty, his curling hair, and most of all his 
lameness, told his name to the few. The few whispered 
it to the many, they in turn gazed and whispered too, 
and almost before he had uttered a word, the entire 
assemblage knew that the speaker was the notorious 
writer of the famous Satire whose winged Apollonian 
shafts had stung the whole poetic cult of England — ^the 
twenty-four-year-old lord whose name was coupled in 
the newspapers with unlovely tales of bacchanals in 
Madrid, duellos in Malta and Gibraltar, and harem in- 
trigues in Constantinople; tales half -believed even by 
those who best knew what enemies his vitriolic pen had 
made and their opportunities for slander. 

Gordon had acted in a mental world created by ex- 
citement. His pride had spurred him, in a moment of 
humiliation, to thrust himself into the place he of right 
should occupy. Mere accident had chosen the debate; 
the casual circumstance of a visit to the Fleet Prison 
had determined his position in it. Given these, his mind 
had responded clearly, spontaneously, with a grasp and 
brilliancy of which he himself had been scarcely con- 
scious. He remembered, with a curious impersonal won- 
der as he walked, the sharp, straining, mental effort be- 
fore that battery of glances coldly formal at first, then 
surprised into approval and at length warmed to enthu- 
siastic applause; the momentary hush as he sat down; 


68 


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the buzz of undammed talk crisped by the tap of the 
gavel; the press of congratulations which followed him 
to the outer air. 

How, as he stood in his room in the gray light of the 
early morning, a feeling of distaste came over him. 
Why had he spoken ? Had it been from any sympathy 
for the cause he championed? Was it not rather in a 
mere spirit of hurt pride and resentment — ^the same 
resentment that had made him refuse to eliminate the 
bitter stanzas from his book ? A flush rose to his brow. 
How unworthy had been his motive beside that of the 
stripling who had written against that same bill ! 

A sense of shame rushed through him. In the late 
weeks at Hewstead he had felt how small were such im- 
pulses. He had told himself that he would sing for his 
song’s own sake and keep it free from the petty and 
the retaliative; that he would live in the azure his own 
mind created and let the world’s praise and abuse alike 
go by. Had he kept this determination ? 

He poured out a second tumbler of the liquor and 
drank it. 

Neither claret nor champagne ever affected him, but 
the double draft of brandy brought an immediate 
intoxication that grew almost instantly to a gray giddi- 
ness. He pushed a couch to the wall, shoved a screen 
between it and the dawn-lit windows, threw himself 
down without undressing and fell into a moveless sl^ep 
that lasted many hours. The reaction, his physical 
weariness and both topped by the cognac, made his slum- 
ber log-like, a dull, dead blank of nothingness, unbroken 
by any sound. 

Eletcher came in yawning, looked into his master’s 


THE CASTAWAY 


69 


sleeping-room and went out shaking his head. Later he 
brought a pile of letters, and relaid the fire. Hoon came 
— one, two o’clock — and meanwhile there were many 
knocks upon the door, from each of which the valet re- 
turned with larger eyes to add another personal card or 
note to the increasing pile on the table. 

As the clock struck three, he opened the door upon 
two of the best-liked of his master’s old-time town asso- 
ciates. They were Tom Moore, with a young ruddy face 
of Irish humor, and Sheridan, clad to sprucery as if 
Apollo had sent him a birthday suit, and smiling like a 
rakish gray-haired cherub. 

^^Eletcher, where’s your master ?” 

"His lordship is out, Mr. Sheridan.” 

^^The devil he is! Hang it, we’ll wait then, Tom. 
Go and look for him, Fletcher.” 

"I shouldn’t know where to look, sir. My lord didn’t 
come in at all last night.” 

Sheridan whistled. "That’s queer. Well, we’ll wait 
a while,” — and they entered. As he saw the pile of 
newly arrived stationery, the older man threw his stick 
into the corner and smote Moore on the shoulder with a 
chuckle. 

"I told them so!” he vociferated, wagging his head. 
"I told them so when his Satire first came out. Curse 
catch me, d’ye ever know of such a triumph? That 
speech was the spark to the powder. It was cute of 
Murray to issue last night. Every newspaper in town 
clapping its hands and bawling bigger adjectives. Gen- 
ius and youth — ah, what a combination it is !” 

He took a pinch of snuff and descended upon the 
heap of cards and billets, picking up each in turn 




THE CASTAWAY 


between thumb and forefinger and looking at it with 
a squint. ^‘‘Lord Carlisle/ he read — ^fiiis guardian, 
eh? Wouldn’t introduce him in the Lords two years 
ago. Colonel Greville’ — ^wanted to fight George once 
for a line in his Satire about high-play in the Argyle 
Club! He’s cooing gently now! Blue-tinted note — 
smells of violets. Humph ! More notes — seven of ’em ! 
Eletcher, you old humbug, d’ye know your master at this 
moment is the greatest man in London ?” 

^^Yes, Mr. Sheridan.” 

‘^Oh, you do ? Knew it all along, I suppose. Doesn’t 
surprise you one bit, eh ?” 

‘^Ko, Mr. Sheridan.” 

^^Curse catch me! — 

^^Yes, Mr. Sheridan.” 

Moore laughed, and the older man, cackling at the 
valet’s matter-of-fact expression, continued his task: 
‘^Card from the Bishop of London — Lord deliver us! 
Another letter — where have I seen that silver crest? 
Why, the Melbourne arms, to be sure! By the hand- 
writing, it’s from the countess herself. ‘Lord Heath- 
cote’ — ‘Lord Holland.’ It’s electric ! It’s a contagion ! 
All London is mad to-day, mad over George Gordon !” 

“I passed Murray’s shop an hour ago,” declared 
Moore. “There was a string of carriages at the door 
like the entrance of Palace Yard. Murray told me he 
will have booked orders for fourteen thousand copies 
before night-fall.” 

As the other threw down the mass of stationery, he 
spied the bottle which Gordon had half emptied. 

“Here’s some cognac,” he said. “Fletcher, some 
glasses. That’s right. It’s early in the day for brandy. 


THE CASTAWAY 


71 


but T>etter never than late,’ as Hobhouse would say. 
Well toast Gordon’s success.” He poured for both and 
the rims clicked. 

^^To ^Childe Harold’ !” cried Moore. 

With the glasses at their lips, a voice broke forth be- 
hind them declaiming ex tempore: 

“My boat is on the shore, 

And my bark is on the sea; 

But before I go, Tom Moore, 

Here’s a double health to theeT 

Moore dragged away the screen. Gordon was stand- 
ing by the couch ; his tumbled hair and disordered dress 
showed he had just awakened. His face was flushed, 
his eyes sparkling. 

^^You villain!” expostulated Moore; “it’s you we’re 
toasting.” 


“ — And with water or with wine. 

The libation I would pour 
Should be peace with thine and mine. 

And — a health to thee, Tom Moore!” 

“Gordon, you eavesdropper, have you read the pa- 
pers?” Sheridan shouted. 

“Hot a line!” 

“Curse catch me, you’ve heard us talking then ! 
George, George, you’ve waked to find yourself famous !” 

Gordon hardly felt their hand-clasps or heard their 
congratulatory small-talk. He almost ran to the win- 
dow and flung it open, drawing the cool air into his 
lungs with a great respiration. His sleep had been 
crumpled and scattered by the fall of a walking-stick. 


72 


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as the crackling of thin ice will spill and dissipate a 
crowd of skaters. He had caught snatches of conver- 
sation indistinctly as he shook off the leaden stupor of 
the intoxicant. ^^Every newspaper in town clapping 
its hands ^^All London mad over George Gordon!” 
His mind had conned the sentences dully at first, then 
with a gasping dart of meaning. His speech? Ho, it 
could not be that. Moore had spoken the name of his 
book, and he had known — realized in a flash, while 
he lay quivering. Then it was that he had leaped to 
his feet. Then he had voiced that impromptu toast, 
declaimed while he fought hard to repress his exulta- 
tion, with every nerve thrilling a separate, savage tri- 
umph of its own. 

He looked down. It was as fine a day as that on which 
Paradise was made, and the streets were alive. Several 
pedestrians stopped to stare up at him curiously. A car- 
riage was passing, and he saw the gentleman it held 
speak to the lady by his side and point toward the build- 
ing. Fame ! To clamp shut the mouths of the scoun- 
drels who maligned him and his 1 To feel the sting of 
the past covered with the soothing poultice of real repu- 
tation! To fling back the sneers of his enemies into 
their teeth. To be no longer singular, isolated, excom- 
municate — ^to have the world^s smiles and its praise ! 

Yesterday seemed a dream. It was fading into an 
indistinguishable background, with the face of the 
bright-eyed youth in the Fleet Prison — and the dull 
shame he had felt at dawn. 

He turned. ^Tardon me if I play the host poorly to- 
day,” he said ; am ridiculously, fine-ladically nervous. 
I fear I must have retired drunk — a good old gentle- 


THE CASTAWAY 


73 


manly vice — and am now at the freezing point of re- 
turning soberness.” 

Sheridan pushed him into his bedroom. 

^^Make your toilet, my boy,” he told him good-na- 
turedly. ^^We will wait,” — and Gordon resigned himself 
to the ministrations of Fletcher and the comfort of 
hot water and fine linen. 

When he came back to find his visitors smoking, he 
had thrust all outward agitation under the surface. He 
was dressed in elegance, and a carnation was in the 
buttonhole of his white great-coat. There was less of 
melancholy curve to the finely-wrought lips, more of 
slumbrous fire in the gray-blue eyes. 

^‘^There^s a soberer for you.” Moore indicated the 
pile of sealed missives and pasteboards. “Youfil cer- 
tainly need a secretary.” 

Gordon^s eye caught the Melbourne crest. He picked 
out the note from the rest hastily, with a vision flit- 
ting through his mind of a clear-eyed statuesque girl. 
While he was reading there was a double knock at the 
door which Fletcher answered. 

A splendid figure stood on the threshold, arrayed as 
Solomon was not in all his glory, and the figure pushed 
his way in, with gorgeous disregard of the valet. 

^Ts his lordship in yet?” he simpered. ^^Eh? Stap 
my vitals, say iFs Captain Brummell — George Brum- 
mell — and be quick about it. Ah!” he continued, rais- 
ing his glass to his eye, as he distinguished the group, 
^^there he is now, and old Sherry, too. I am your lord- 
ship’s most obedient ! I’ve been here twice this after- 
noon. You must come to Watier’s Club with me, sir — 
I’ll be. sworn, I must be the one to introduce you ! You 


74 


THE CASTAWAY 


will all favor us, gentlemen, of course, as my guests. 
My chariot is at the door 

thank you. Captain,’^ Gordon answered, as he 
folded the note of invitation he had been reading and 
put it in his pocket, ^^ut I cannot give myself the 
pleasure this afternoon. Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Moore 
will doubtless be charmed. I am promised within the 
hour to dinner — at Lady Melbourne's.^’ 


CHAPTER X 


THE PRICE OP THE BAUBLE 

Beau Brummell, from his seat in the bow-window, 
bowed with empressement as Gordon alighted from his 
carriage and ascended the steps of White’s Club from 
an early dinner at Holland House. 

^^’Fore gad/’ admired the dandy, ^Vhat a coat! It 
becomes him as if he’d been hatched in it.” 

Lord Petersham at his elbow gazed with seconding 
approval. The somber elegance of the black velvet 
dress-coat, which Gordon wore close-buttoned, and the 
white rolling collar left open so as to expose the throat, 
served to heighten the pallor of his skin and set in 
high relief the handsome, patrician face above it. 

^^Still on his pedestal,” observed Petersham. ^TBe- 
fore long his vertex suhlimis will displace enough stars to 
overthrow the Newtonian system! I hear Caro Lamb 
is not tired doing homage. His aifair with Lady Ox- 
ford seems to be tapering.” 

^^Women!” ejaculated Brummell. "He’s a martyr 
to them. Stap my vitals, the beauties run after him 
because he won’t make up to them. Treat women like 
fools, and they’ll all worship you !” 

To the pinnacle this implied, Gordon had risen at 
( 75 ) 


76 


THE CASTAWAY 


a leap. He was the idol of fashionable London, the 
chief topic of frivolous boudoir gossip and intellectual 
table-talk. His person, his travels spangled with ro- 
mantic tales, his gloom, his pride, his beauty, and the 
dazzle of his prodigious success, combined to bring him 
an unheard-of homage. His newest book was on every 
drawing-room table in the kingdom. He was made much 
of by Lady Jersey. Hostesses quarrelled over entertain- 
ing him, and ladies of every title below the blood- 
Toyal asked to be placed next him at dinner. The 
regent himself had asked him to Carlton House. 

Each of his publications since that February day 
when he woke to fame and when the chariot of the in- 
comparable Captain Brummell had set him down at Mel- 
bourne House, had had a like history. Each had won 
the same rapt praise, the same wondering homage to 
talent. If they missed the burning fervor of those 
earlier impassioned lines on Grecian liberty, if they 
held, each more clearly, an under-note of agnosticism, 
it was overlooked in delight at their freedom, their 
metrical sweep and seethe of feeling, the melancholy 
sea-surge and fret of their moods. His ancient de- 
tractors, whom his success had left breathless, con- 
strained to innuendo, had added to his personality the 
tang of the audacious, of bizarre license, of fantastic 
eccentricity, that beckoned even while it repelled. 

One would have thought Gordon himself indifferent 
to praise as to censure. The still dissatisfaction that 
came to him in the night hours in his tumbled study, 
when he remembered the strength and purpose that 
had budded in his soul in those early weeks at Hew- 
stead, he alone knew. The convention that had carped 


THE CASTAWAY 


n 

at him before his fame he trod under foot. He fre- 
quented Manton’s shooting-gallery, practised the broad 
sword at Angelovs, sparred with ^^Gentleman Jackson,’^ 
the champion pugilist, in his rooms in Bond Street, 
and clareted and champagned at the Cocoa-Tree with 
Sheridan and Moore till five in the matin. Other men 
jmight conceal their harshest peccadilloes; Gordon con- 
cealed nothing. What he did he did frankly, with dis- 
dain for appearances. Hypocrisy was to him the souFs 
gangrene. He preferred to have the world think him 
worse than to think him better than he was. 

His enemies in time had plucked up courage, re- 
vamped old stories and invented nev^; these seemed to 
give him little concern. Jle not only kept silence but 
declined to allow his friends, such as Sheridan and 
Hobhouse, to champion him. When the Chronicle 
barbed a sting with a reference to the enormous sums 
he was pocketing from his copyholds, he shrugged his 
shoulders. John Murray, his publisher, knew that the 
earnings of ^^The Giaour^^ had been given to a needy au- 
thor; that ^^Zuleika” had relieved a family from the 
slavery of debt and sent them, hopeful colonists, to Aus- 
tralia. 

Gordon passed into the club, bowing to the group 
in the bow-window with conventional courtesy, and 
entered the reading-room. It was September, but the 
night had turned cool, and he dropped into a chair be- 
fore the hearth. 

‘^Why does Lady Holland always have that damned 
screen between the whole room and the fire T’ he grum- 
bled half-humorously. who bear cold no better than 
an antelope, and never yet found a sun quite done to 


78 


THE CASTAWAY 


my taste, was absolutely petrified, and couldn’t even 
shiver. All the rest, too, looked as if they were just 
unpacked, like salmoai from an ice-basket !” 

A lackey in the club’s regalia brought a tray of let- 
ters and set it beside him. Gordon lit a cigar before he 
examined them. They were the usual collection: a 
sprinkling of effusions from romantic incognitas; a 
graver tribute from Walter Scott; a pressing request 
for that evening from Lady Jersey. 

^To meet Madame de Stael!” he mused. once 
travelled three thousand miles to get among silent peo- 
ple; and this lady writes octavos and talks folios. I 
have read her essay against suicide ; if I heard her recite 
it, I might swallow poison.” 

The final note he lifted was written on blue-bordered 
paper, its corners embossed with tiny cockle-shells, and 
he opened it with a nettled frown. 

^Toor Caro !” he muttered. ‘^Why will you persist in 
imprudent things? Some day your epistle will fall 
into the lion’s jaws, and then I must hold out my iron. 
I am out of practice, but I won’t go to Manton’s now. 
Besides,” he added with a shrug, wouldn’t return his 
shot. I used to be a famous wafer-splitter, but since 
I began to feel I had a bad cause to support, I have 
left off the exercise.” 

His face took on a deeper perplexity as he read the 
eccentric, curling hand: 

‘L . . Gordon, do you remember that first dinner at 
Melbourne House — the day after your speech in the Lords? 
You gave me a carnation from your buttonhole. You 
said, ‘I am told your ladyship likes all that is new and 
rare — for the moment!’ Ah, that meeting was not only 


THE CASTAWAY 


79 


for the moment with me, you know that! It has lasted 
ever since. I have never heard your name announced 
that it did not thrill every pulse of my body. I have never 
heard a venomous word against you that did not sting me, 
too.” 

Gordon held the letter in a candle-flame, and dropped 
it on the salver. As it crackled to a mass of glowing 
tinder, a step fell behind him. He looked up to see 
Moore. 

^^Tom,” he said, his brow clearing, am in one of 
my most vaporish moments.^^ 

Moore seated himself on a chair-arm and poked the 
blackening twist of paper with his walking-stick. He 
smiled an indulgent smile of prime and experience. 

^^From which I conclude — he answered sagely, 
^That you are bound to Drury Lane greenroom instead 
of to Lady Jersey^s this evening.^^ 

Gordon^s lips caught the edge of the other’s smile. 

^‘You are right. I’m going to let Jane Clermont 
brighten my mood. She is always interesting — more so 
off the stage than on. They are only hothouse roses 
that will bloom at Lady Jersey’s. Jane is a wild tiger- 
lily. She has all the natural wit of the de Stael — a 
pity it must he wasted on the pit loungers! Heaven 
only knows why I ever go to their ladyships’ infernal 
functions at all, for I hate bustle as I hate a bishop. 
Here I am, eternally stalking to parties where I shan’t 
talk, I can’t flatter, and I won’t listen — except to a 
pretty woman. If one wants to break a commandment 
and covet his neighbor’s wife, it’s all very well. But to 
go out amongst the mere herd, without a motive, a 


so 


THE CASTAWAY 


pleasure or a pursuit, of no more use than a sick butter- 
fly — it begins to pall upon my soul !” 

Moore’s stick was still meditatively poking the 
charred paper. The ashes fell apart, and a tiny un- 
burnt blue corner showed — it bore the familiar device 
of a cockle-shell. His lips puckered in a thoughtful 
whistle. Aloud he said : 

^^Why not adopt the conventional remedy?” 

^H’m too lazy to shoot myself !” 

“There’s a more comfortable medicine than that.” 

Gordon’s smile broke into a laugh. “Wedlock, eh? 
Heading the country newspapers and kissing one’s wife’s 
maid! To experience the superlative felicity of those 
foxes who have cut their tails and would persuade 
the rest to part with their brushes to keep them 
in countenance I All my coupled contemporaries — 
save you, Tom — are bald and discontented. Words- 
worth and Southey have both lost their hair and 
good humor. But after all,” he said, rising, “anything 
is better than these hypochondriac whimsies. In the 
name of St. Hubert, patron of antlers and hunters, let 
me be married out of hand. I don’t care to whom, so 
it amuses anybody else and doesn’t interfere with me 
in the daytime ! By the way, can’t you come down to 
Newstead for the shooting-season? Sheridan and Hob- 
house are to be there, and my cellar is full though my 
head is empty. What do you say? You can plague us 
with songs. Sherry can write a new comedy, and I mean 
to let my beard grow, and hate you all.” 

His companion accepted with alacrity. “When shall 
we start?” he inquired, walking with the other to his 
carriage. 


THE CASTAWAY 


81 


^“'At noon, to-morrow/^ Gordon replied. then, 

good night. I commend yon to the care of the gods — 
Hindoo, Scandinavian and Hellenic.^^ 

As the wheels clattered on, Gordon^s mind was run- 
ning in channels of discontent. 

"I am ennuye/* he thought, ^T)eyond my usual tense 
of that yawning verb I am always conjugating. At six- 
and-twenty one should be something — and what am I? 
Nothing but six-and- twenty, and the odd months. Six- 
and-twenty years, as they call them — why, I might have 
been a pasha by this time 

The coach turned a corner, and he saw, a little way 
off, the lighted front of Drury Lane Theater. In the 
shadow of its stage-door stood a couple his sight did not 
distinguish, but the keen black eyes of one of them — a 
vivid, creole-looking girl — ^had noted with a quick in- 
stinctive movement the approach of the well-known 
carriage, now tangled in the moving stream. 

The gaze of the man beside her — defiant, furtive, 
theatric and mustachioed, with hair falling thickly and 
shortly like a Moores— -followed her look. 

^^He was in the greenroom last night, too !” he said, 
with angry jealousy. saw him coming away.^^ 

^^Suppose you did?’^ flung the girl with irritation. 
^^Who are you, that I must answer for whom I see or 
know — ^yes, and for anything else? He was here, and 
so was Mr. Sheridan and Captain Brummell. I should 
like to know what you have to say about it !” 

The other’s cheek had flushed darkly. 

^Y'ou used to have more time for me, Jane,” he an- 
swered sullenly, ^fl)efore you took up with the theater — 


82 


THE CASTAWAY 


when yon lived over the old book-shop and hadn’t a 
swarm of idling dandies about you.” 

suppose his lordship there is an ^idling dandy’ !” 
she retorted with fine sarcasm. ^^A dandy, and the 
most famous man in England! An idler, who gets a 
guinea a line for all he writes. What do you spend, pray, 
that your father in Wales didn’t leave you? Tell me,” 
she said curiously, her tone changing ; ^^you were in the 
East when you were in the navy. Are all the stories 
they tell of George Gordon in Greece true? They say 
he himself is Conrad, the hero of his ^Corsair.’ Was he 
so dreadfully wicked?” 

He turned away his head, gnawing his lip. don’t 
know,” he returned doggedly, ^^and I care less. I know 
he’s only amusing himself with you, Jane, and you 
know it, too — ” 

“And it’s no amusement to you ?” she prompted, with 
innate coquetry, dropping back into her careless tone. 
^Tf it isn’t, don’t come then. I shall try to get along, 
never fear. Why shouldn’t I know fine people?” she 
went on, a degree less hardly. “I’m tired of this foggy, 
bread-and-butter life. It was bad enough at God- 
win’s stuffy house with poverty and a stepfather. I 
don’t wonder Mary has run away to marry her Shelley ! 
He’ll be a baronet some day, and she can see life. I 
don’t intend to be tied to London always, either — even 
with the playing ! I want to know things and see some- 
thing of the world. Why do you stay here? Why 
don’t you go to sea again ? I’m sure Fd like to.” 

“You know why I don’t,” he said, “well enough. I 
deserted the service once, besides. But I’d like to see 
the world — ^with you, Jane I” 


THE CASTAWAY 


83 


He did not see the line that curved her lips, half- 
scornfnl, half-pitying, for his look had fastened on a 
figure in a ministerial cloak, who was passing on the 
pavement. The figure was Dr. James Cassidy, taking 
his evening walk with the under-curate of St. Dun- 
stan’s-in-the-West — an especially enjoyable hour with 
him. 

How, as Cassidy’s insect eyes lifted, they fell on the 
oriental face in the shadow of the doorway with a sud- 
den interrogative start. He took a step toward it, hesi- 
tatingly, but the curate was in the midst of a quotation 
from Eusebius, and the pause was but momentary. The 
girl’s Moorish-looking companion had not moved, but 
his hands had clenched and his face had an ugly expres- 
sion as Cassidy passed on. 

^‘'Only a resemblance,” remarked the latter, as he pro- 
ceeded. ^^The man in the doorway there reminded me 
of an ensign who deserted the Pylades once when we 
were lying at Bombay.” His hand touched a broad white 
scar on his cheek. trust he may yet be apprehended 
— for the good of the service,” he added softly. 

Gordon’s eyes, as the carriage picked its way, had 
been on the front of the theater, but they were preoc- 
cupied. He did not see the look of dislike from the mus- 
tachioed face in the shadow, nor the girl as she vanished 
through the stage-door. Yet, as it happened, the first 
glimpse of the theater had brought a thought of her. 

^^Fond, flippant, wild, elusive, alluring — ^the devil!” 
he mused. ^^That’s Jane Clermont — she would furnish 
out a new chapter for Solomon’s Song. The stage is 
her atmosphere: she came to it as naturally as a hum- 
ming-bird to a garden of geraniums. Yet she will never 


84 


THE CASTAWAY 


mate a Siddons ; she lacks purpose and she is — 
mechante. She appeals to the elemental, raw sense of 
the untamed and picturesque men own in common with 
savages. Nature made such women to cure man’s ennui : 
they fit his mood. Jane Clermont was not born for 
fine ladies’ fripperies. What is it she lacks ? Balance ? 
— or is it the moral sense ? After all, I’m not sure but 
that lack is what makes her so interesting. I have been 
attracted a million times by passion; have I ever been 
attracted by sheer purity? Yes — ^there is one. Anna- 
bel Milhanke !” 

There rose before his mind’s eye a vision of the tall 
stateliness he had so often seen at Melbourne House. He 
seemed to feel again the touch of cool, ringless fingers. 
How infinitely different she was from others who had 
been more often in his fancy! She had attracted him 
from his first street glimpse of her — from the first day 
he looked into her calm virginal eyes across a dinner- 
table. It was her placidity — ^the very absence of chaos 
— ^that drew him. She represented the one type of 
which he was not tired. Besides, she was beautiful — 
not with the ripe, red, exotic beauty of Lady Caroline 
Lamb, or .the wilder eccentric charm of Jane Clermont, 
but with the unalterable serenity of a rain-washed sky, 
a snow-bank, a perfect statue. 

On his jaded mood the thought of her fell with a 
salving relief, like rain on a choked highway. A link- 
boy, throwing open the carriage door, broke his reverie. 

He looked up. The bright, garish lanterns smote 
him with a new and alien sense of distaste. Beyond the 
stage-entrance and the long dim passage lay the candle- 
lighted greenroom, the select coterie that gossiped there. 


THE CASTAWAY 


85 


and — Jane Clermont. In Portman Square, in the city’s 
west end, Lady Jersey was standing by her bower of 
roses and somewhere in the throng about her moved a 
tall, spirit-looking girl with calm, lash-shaded eyes. 

Gordon saw both pictures clearly as he paused, his 
foot on the carriage step. Then he spoke to the coach- 
man. 

^^To Lady Jersey’s/’ he said, and reentered the car ^ 
riage. 


CHAPTEE XI 


THE BEATEN PATH 

The late sun, rosying the lake beside the ruined clois- 
ter, had drawn its flame-wrought curtains across the 
moor that lay about Xewstead, and the library was full 
of shadows as Gordon groped in the darkness for a can- 
dle. 

Dinner was scarce through, for the party he had 
gathered — ^who for a noisy fortnight had made the 
gray old pile resound to the richest fooleries in the 
range of their invention — did not rise before noon, had 
scarce breakfasted by two, and voted the evening still 
in its prime at three o’clock in the morning. The Ab- 
bey had been theirs to turn upside down and they had 
given rein to every erratic audacity. That very day 
they had had the servants drag into the dining-room an 
old stone coffin from the rubbish of the tumble-down 
priory; had resurrected from some cobwebbed corner a 
set of monkish dresses with all the proper apparatus of 
crosses and beads with which they had opened a con- 
ventual chapter of “The Merry Monks of Newstead”; 
and had set Fletcher to polishing the old skull drink- 
ing-cup on whose silver mounting Gordon long ago had 
had engraved the stanzas he had written on the night 
( 86 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


87 


his mother lay dead. The grotesquerie had been hailed 
with enthusiasm, and the company had sat that even- 
ing gowned and girdled about the dinner-table, where 
Sheridan^s gray poll had given him the seat of honor 
as abbot. 

Gordon wore one of the black gabardines, as he lit 
the candle in the utterly confused library. It was a 
sullen, magnificent chamber. The oak wainscoting was 
black with age. Tapestries and book-shelves covered 
one side, and floor and tables were littered with reviews 
and books, carelessly flung from their place. 

A shout, mingled with the prolonged howls of a wolf 
and the angered ^%oof’ of a bear sounded from the 
driveway — ^the guests were amusing themselves with the 
beasts chained on either side of the entrance. These 
were relics of that old, resentful season when Gordon 
had hermited himself there to lash his critics with his 
defiant Satire. The wolf, he had then vowed, should l)e 
entered for the deanery of St. Paul’s, and the bear sit 
for a theological fellowship at Cambridge. 

For a moment, candle in hand, he listened to the 
mingled noises, his head on one side, a posture almost of 
irksomeness. He started when Sheridan’s hand fell on 
his shoulder. 

^^By the Lord!” he ejaculated. ‘^1 took you for the 
Abbey ghost !” 

Sheridan laughed, lit the cigar Gordon handed him, 
and sat down, tucking the ends of his rope-girdle be- 
tween his great knees. The tonsure he had contrived 
was a world too small for his massive head, and the 
monk’s robe showed inconsistent glimpses of red waist- 
coat and fawn-colored trousers where its edges gaped. 


88 


THE CASTAWAY 


are you mooning over?” he asked. ^^Got a 
new poem in mind ?” 

^^Ho. To-day I have thrown two into the fire to my 
comfort, and smoked out of my head the plan of an- 
other.” 

^^Sentimental ?” 

^^Hot I. I was thinking of the East. I wish I might 
sail for Greece in the spring — ^provided I neither marry 
myself nor unmarry any one else in the interval.” 

^^Why not the first?” the other pursued. tried it 
younger than you.” 

The speaker sighed presently, and locking his hands 
behind his head, leaned back against the cushions, his 
fine, rugged face under its shock of rough gray hair, 
turned tender. ^^My pretty maid of Bath!” he said 
softly. ‘^Elizabeth, my girl-wife that I fought a duel 
for at Kingsdown and who ran away with me to 
France when I hadn’t a pound ! It’s twelve years since 
she died. This is an anniversary to me, my boy. Forty 
years ago to-day she married me. I hadn’t written ^The 
Eivals’ then, nor gone to Parliament — ^nor grown old !” 

Gordon was silent. Sheridan’s face, in the candle- 
light, was older than he had ever seen it. Age was 
claiming him, though youth was still in the foppish 
dress, the brilliant sparkle of the eye, the sharp quick- 
ness on the tongue. But the wife he remembered at 
that moment had belonged to a past generation. 

A muffled call came — ^^^Sherry! Sherry!” and at the 
summons the gray head lifted and the gleam of in- 
corrigible humor shot again across the thin cheeks. ^The 
rogues are whooping for me !” he chuckled, and hurried 
out. 


THE CASTAWAY 


89 


Gordon stared into the gloom of the open window 
opposite in a reverie. That echo of still-living memory 
struck across his whimsical mood with strange direct- 
ness, like a voice speaking insistently of simple human 
needs. 

^^To love, to marry — he reflected. ^Tt is the re- 
course of the highest intellect as well as the lowest. 
There is Sheridan. He is brain at its summit. He puts 
more intellect into squeezing a new case of claret out of 
a creditor tradesman than the average man has in his 
whole brain-box. He has written the very best drama 
and delivered the very best single oration ever conceived 
or heard in England. And now, without his pretty 
wife, he is a prey to debt, to gaming and to the bailiffs ! 
Peace and single possession, the Eden-right of man — 
the having and holding from all the world of one warm, 
human sympathy — ^that is the world^s way, the clear 
result of ages of combined experience.^^ 

He looked up at a pounding of hoofs outside and a 
howl from the chained wolf. The sounds merged into 
a hilarious hubbub from the dining-room, betokening 
some neighborhood arrival. 

His eyes, still gazing through the parted curtains, 
could discern dimly on the terrace a white image stand- 
ing out in relief from the swathing darkness. It was a 
statue of Vesta, goddess of the domestic fireside. It 
seemed to gaze in at him with a peculiar quiet signifi- 
cance. To the Komans that image had stood for the 
hearthstone — for all the sweet, age-old conventionali- 
ties of life, such as enshrined his sister, in her placid 
country home, her children around her. He had a vi- 
sion of a stately figure moving about the Abbey with 


THE CASTAWAY 


a watching solicitude, and there flashed into his mind 
the beginning of one of his poems: 

“She walks in beauty, like the night 

Of cloudless climes and starry skies — ” 

It sang itself over in his brain. The w'oman he 
would choose would be like that — cool, cloudless, beau- 
tiful as the night outside the open window. He knew 
such a woman, as flawless and as lovely — one, and one 
only. His thought, unweighted by purpose, had fol- 
lowed her since that July afternoon when she had 
handed him the golden guinea in exchange for his book. 
She was not in London rfow. At that moment she was 
in Mansfield, a sharp gallop across the Hewstead moor. 
If he had ever had a dream of feminine perfectness, 
she was its embodiment. Would marriage with such a 
one fetter him ? In the great clanging world that teased 
and worried him, would it not he a refuge ? 

A sudden recollection came to him, out of the dust 
of a past year — a recollection of a youth with bright 
eyes and tangled hair, in the Fleet Prison. There had 
been an hour, before success had bitten him, when he 
had promised himself that fame’s fox-fire should not 
lure him, that he would cherish his song and rid his 
soul of the petty things that dragged it down. How 
had that promise been fulfilled? With poor adventure, 
and empty intrigue and flickering rushlight amours to 
which that restless something in him had driven him 
on, an anchorless craft in the cross-tides of passion ! 

^^Home !” he mused. ^^To pursue no will-o’-the-wisp 
of fancy ! To shut out all vagrant winds and prolong 
that spark of celestial fire !’" 


THE CASTAWAY 




He drew a quick sibilant breath, sat down at the 
writing-table and wrote hastily but unerringly, a letter,, 
clean-etched and unembellished, a simple statement 
and a question. 

He signed it, laughing aloud as a sense of wild in- 
congruity gushed over him. Through the heavy oaken 
doors he could hear mingled laughter and uproar. A 
stentorian bass was rumbling a drinking-song. 

What a challenging antithesis! Lava and snow — 
erratic comet and chaste moon — jungle passions and the- 
calm of a northern landscape 1 A proposal of marriage- 
written at such a time and place, with a drinking-stave- 
shouted in the next room ! And what would be her an-, 
swer ? 

The daring grew brighter in his eye. He sealed the 
letter with a coin from his waistcoat pocket, sprang up 
and jerked the bell-rope. The footman entered. 

^^Eushton, have Selim saddled at once and take this 
note to Mansfield. Eide like the devil. Do you hear ?” 

^^Yes, my lord.^^ The boy looked at the superscrip- 
tion, put the note in his pocket and was gone. 

Gordon laughed again — a burst of gusty excitement 
— and seized the full ink-well into which he had dipped 
his pen. ^Tt shall serve no lesser purpose!” he ex- 
claimed, and hurled it straight through the open win- 
dow. 

Then he threw open the door and walked hastily to- 
ward the hilarity of the great dining-room. 


CHAPTER XII 


^^man’s love is op man’s life a thing apaet” 

What he saw as he emerged from the hall was Sat- 
urnalia indeed. 

Sheridan, his robe thrown open from his capacious 
frame, sat with knees wide apart, his chair tilted back, 
his face crumpling with amusement. Hobhouse sat 
cross-legged on the stone coffin. Others, robed and ton- 
sured, were grouped about the board, and on it was 
perched a stooped and ungainly figure in a somber dress 
of semi-clerical severity. 

^^Sunburn me, it’s Dr. Cassidy,” muttered Gordon, 
with a grim smile. ^^And without his tracts ! What’s 
he doing at Newstead? The rascals — ^they’ve got him 
fuddled !” 

The hospitality offered in the host’s absence had in 
truth proved too much for the doctor. Now, as he bal- 
anced on his gaitered feet among the overturned wine- 
bottles, he looked a very unclerical figure indeed. His 
neck-cloth was awry, and his flattish eyes had a look of 
comical earnestness and unaccustomed good-fellowship. 
He held a wine-glass and waved it in uncertain ges- 
tures, his discourse punctured by frequent and unstint- 
ed applause : 


,( 93 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


9a 


^WThat was the Tree of Knowledge doing in the gar- 
den, yon ask. Why not planted on the other side of 
the wall? Human reason, enlightened by inspiration, 
finds no answer in the divine Word. Theology is our 
only refuge. Adam was predestined to sin. All created 
things are contingent on omnipotent volition. Sin be- 
ing predestined, the process leading to that sin must 
be predestined, too. See ? Sin — Adam. Garden — 
snake. The law of the divine Will accomplished.’^ 

Hobhouse wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. 
^^Who could contemplate the picture,” he groaned, 
^Vithout tears? Poor fallen man! I weep for him.” 

The remark struck the lecturer with pathos. The 
look of stern satisfaction with which he had so elo- 
quently justified the eternal tragedy melted into a com- 
passionate expression which had a soft tinge of the ro- 
mantic. He smiled — a smile of mingled burgundy and 
benevolence. 

^‘Herein, gentlemen, appears our lesson of infinite 
pity. Man expelled from Eden, but still possessing 
Eve. Justice tempered with mercy. L«ve of woman 
compensating for the loss of earthly Paradise.” 

^True, true,” murmured Hobhouse. ^There’s 
heaven on earth in woman’s love,’ as Mr. Moore, here, 
sings. A prime subject for another toast. Doctor. 
We’ve drunk to the navy and to theology; now for a 
glass to her eternal ladyship ! — Egad I Here’s Gordon !” 

The final word brought a shout, and the glasses were 
refilled. ^^Gordon’s toast !” they insisted as they opened 
ranks. ^^A toast, or a new poem !” 

Some diiturbance out of doors had roused the ani- 


94 


THE CASTAWAY 


mals kennelled at the hall entrance and a battery of 
growls mingled with the importunities. 

Sheridan ponnded with his great fist on the jingling 
board till the uproar stilled. ^^The lord of the manor 
speaks !” he proclaimed. 

Gordon approached the table and picked up the skull- 
cup. In the blaze of candle-light, his face showed 
markedly its singular and magnetic beauty. He 
glanced about him an instant — at Sheridan’s waggish, 
rough-hewn countenance, at the circle of younger 
flushed and uproarious ones, and at the labored solem- 
nity and surprise of the central figure on the table. The 
doctor’s answering stare was full of a fresh bewilder- 
ment; he was struggling to recall a message he had 
brought to some one — he had forgotten to whom — 
which in the last half-hour had slipped like oil from his 
mind. 

In Gordon’s brain verses yet unwritten had been 
grouping themselves that afternoon — verses that not for 
long were to be set in type — and he spoke them now; 
not flippantly, but with a note of earnestness and of 
feeling, a light flush in his cheek tingeing the colorless 
white of his face, and his gray-blue eyes darkened to 
violet. 


“Woman! though framed in weakness, ever yet 
Her heart reigns mistress of man’s varied mind. 
And she will follow where that heart is set 
As roll the waves before the settled wind. 

Her soul is feminine nor can forget — 

To all except love’s image, fondly blind. 

And she can e’en survive love’s fading dim. 

And bear with life, to love and pray for him!” 


THE CASTAWAY 


95 


It was an odd thing to see this compelling figure, 
standing in the midst of these monkish roisterers, all 
in celibate robes and beads, declaiming lines of such 
passionate beauty and in a voice flexible and appealing. 
An odd toast to drink from such a goblet ! 

“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, 

’Tis woman’s whole existence; man may range 
The court, camp, church, the vessel and the mart. 
Sword, gown, gain, glory offer in exchange. 

Pride and ambition may o’errun his heart. 

And few there are whom these can not estrange. 
Woman knows hut one refuge, if love err — 

To draw him from these baubles, back to her!” 

There was an instant of dead silence when he paused, 
broken by the doctor’s hiccough and a voice behind 
them. 

Sheridan saw Gordon set down the skull-cup as the 
spot of color faded from his cheek. He turned to the 
entrance. 

^"Curse catch me!” gasped the wit, springing to his 
feet. ^^Lady Melbourne and Miss Milbanke !” 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE SMIRCHED IMAGE 

All turned astonished faces. Just inside the oaken 
door swung wide open to the nighty stood her lady- 
ship, her features expressing a sense of humor strug- 
gling with dignity, and just behind her, with a look of 
blent puzzle and surprise, her stately niece, Annabel 
Milbanke. Mrs. Muhl, Gordon’s withered fire-lighter, 
was hovering in the rear. 

It was a tense moment. Gordon’s glance swept An- 
nabel’s face — distinguished a letter still unopened in 
her hand — as he came forward to greet them. A dull 
red was climbing over Cassidy’s sobering face, and with 
something between a gulp and a groan he got down 
heavily from his commanding position. 

It was Lady Melbourne who broke the pause : 

fear we intrude. We were driving across to 
Annesley where there is a ball to-night, and felt 
tempted to take your lordship with us. We had not 
known of your guests. Dr. Cassidy rode ahead to ap- 
prise you of our call.” 

The doctor was mopping his mottled brow. He was 
far too miserable to reply. 

fear our hospitality outran our discretion,” ven- 
( 96 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


97 


tured Gordon, doctor perhaps forgot to mention 

it.^^ 

Lady Melbourne’s quick gaze overran the scene and 
lingered on the crosses and the monkish robes with a 
slow-dawning smile. 

Sheridan made a dramatic gesture. ^Tio, the first 
poet of his age in the depths of one of his abandoned 
debauches !” He pointed to Mrs. Muhl who stood in 
the background, her wrinkled countenance as brown as 
a dry toast — ^^Behold the troop of Paphian damsels, as 
pictured in the Morning Post ! Evasion is no longer pos- 
sible.” 

see. And you. Doctor ?” 

^^The doctor,” said Moore, maintaining his gravity,, 
^fiiad just read us his latest tract.” 

regret we missed it.” She turned to Gordon. 
^^We will not linger. Good night, gentlemen. No,” — 
as Gordon protested — ^^our carriage and escort are wait- 
ing.” 

‘^My dear Lady Melbourne,” interposed Sheridan, 
^^the entire chapter shall escort you. As abbot, I claim 
my right,” — and he offered her his arm. Gordon fol- 
lowed with her niece. 

Annabel’s hand fluttered on his sleeve. ^^We heard 
your toast,” she said. did not dream it of you.” 

On the threshold a tide of rich light met them. The 
moon had risen and was lifting above the moor beyond 
a belt of distant beeehwood, bathing the golden flanks 
of the hills, flooding the long lake with soft yellow lus- 
ter and turning the gray ruins of the priory to dull 
silver. Lady Melbourne led the way out on to the mole 
of the drained moat with a cry of delight: ^^What a 


98 


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perfect lilac night ! It is like Venice. All it lacks is a 
gondola and music.” 

Gordon and Annabel had lingered at the turn of the 
■parapet. He put out his hand and touched the letter 
she held with his forefinger. ^Y'ou have not opened it.” 

^^hTo. Your footman met us coming in the lodge 
gate.” 

‘^Eead it.” 

She looked at him a moment hesitatingly. For a 
long time she had not been ignorant of her interest in 
George Gordon. She admired him also, as every woman 
admires talent and achievement, and the excess of wor- 
ship which the world gave him fed her pride in the 
special measure of his regard. She saw something new 
in his look to-night — something more genuine, yet il- 
lusive. 

^Tlead it,” he repeated. 

She broke the seal and held the written page to the 
moonlight. As she read, a soft mellow note arose. It 
was Hobhouse^s violoncello, playing an aria of Eossini’s 
— a haunting melody that matched the night. The 
notes were still throbbing when her eyes lifted. 

Gordon had taken a golden guinea from his pocket; 
he leaned forward and laid it on the letter’s waxen 
seal. It fitted the impression. 

^Ht was a gift,” he said. “It is the one you gave me 
that day at the book-shop.” 

She felt a sudden tremor of heart — or of nerves. 

“Oh,” she exclaimed, thrilled for a brief moment; 
^^and you kept it?” 

At that instant a figure approached them across the 
terrace, doffing his cap awkwardly. It was the under- 


THE CASTAWAY 


99 


gardener, bringing a trinket he had found that after- 
noon among the lily-bulbs. 

Gordon looked at the plain gold circlet he handed 
him. He turned to Annabel with a strange expression 
as the man disappeared. 

^Ht is my mother’s wedding-ring/’ he said in a low 
voice. ^Ht was lost when I was a child.” 

^^How very odd,” she commented, ^^to find it — ^to- 
day !” 

The music had ceased, and Lady Melbourne and her 
tonsured attendants were coming toward them. 

Annabel’s hand rested on the stone railing and Gor- 
don took it, looking full into her eyes. 

^^Shall I put it on ?” he asked. 

She looked from the ring to his face — ^her cool fin- 
gers trembling in his. 

^^Yes,” she answered, and he slipped it on her finger. 

The noise of the departing carriage-wheels had scarce 
died away when Sheridan entered the library, whither 
Gordon had preceded him. He was tittering inordi- 
nately. 

^H’ve been trying to find Cassidy,” he said, ^fi)ut he’s 
gone. Went and got his horse while Hobhouse was fid- 
dling. Poor doctor ! If he’d only been a parson !” 

^^Look, look !” cried Gordon. He was pointing to the 
window. 

Sheridan stared. The unwavering moonlight fell on 
the image of Vesta — no longer marble- white. The ink- 
well Gordon had hurled through the window had struck 
full on its brows, and the clear features and raiment 
were blackened and befouled with a sinister stain! 


CHAPTEE XIV 


WHirT CAME OP THE TKEACLE-MOOH 

^^The treacle-moon is over. I am awake and find my- 
self married/^ 

Gordon read the lines in the diary he held, by the fad- 
ing daylight. He sat in the primrosed garden of his 
town house on Piccadilly Terrace, beside a wicker tea- 
table. The day was at its amber hour. The curtains 
of the open windows behind him waved lazily in the 
breeze and the fragrance of hawthorn clung like a ca- 
ress across the twilight. What he read had been the last 
entry in the book. 

He smiled grimly, remembering the night he had 
written it. It was at Seaham, the home of his wife’s 
girlhood, the final day of their stay — the end of that 
savorless month of sameness and stagnation, of eating 
fruit and sauntering, playing dull games at cards, yawn- 
ing, reading old Annual Eegisters and the daily papers, 
listening to the monologue that his elderly father-in- 
law called conversation, and watching the growth of 
stunted gooseberry bushes — ^the month in which he had 
eaten of the bitter fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. To- 
day he recalled the trenchant features of that visit dis- 
tinctly: the prim, austere figure of Lady Koel, his 
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THE CASTAWAY 


101 


wife’s mother, presiding at the table; Sir Ealph oppo- 
site, mumbling for the third time, over a little huddle 
of decanters which could neither interrupt nor fall 
asleep, the speech he had made at a recent tax-meeting ; 
his own wife with eyes that so seldom warmed to his, 
but grew keener each day to glance cold disapproval; 
and Mrs. Clermont, Lady Hoel’s companion and con- 
fidante, black-gowned, bloodless, with noiseless gliding 
step and observant gaze — Jane Clermont’s aunt, as he 
had incidentally learned. 

^^The treacle-moon is over!” And that satiric com- 
ment had been penned almost a year ago ! 

Gordon moved his shoulders with a quick gesture, as 
though dismissing an unpleasant reflection, and took 
from his pocket a little black phial. He measured out a 
minute quantity of the dark liquid into a glass and 
poured it full of water. He drank the dull, cloudy 
mixture at a draft. 

^^How strange that mind should need this!” he said 
to himself. ‘^My brain is full of images — rare, beauti- 
ful, dreamlike — ^but they are meaningless, incoherent, 
unattached. A few drops of this elixir and they coal- 
esce, crystallize, transform themselves — and I have a 
poem. I have only to write it down. I wrote ^Lara’ in 
three evenings, while I was undressing from the opera. 
It shan’t master me as it has De Quincey, either. Why, 
all my life I have denied myself even meat. My soul 
shall not be the slave of any appetite !” 

He smiled whimsically as he set down the glass: 
^^What nonsense it is to talk of soul,” he muttered, 
^Vhen a cloud makes it melancholy, and wine makes it 
mad!” 


103 


THE CASTAWAY 


He paused, listening intently. A low sound, an in- 
fant’s cry, had caught his ear. His eyes grew darker 
violet. His look changed. 

^^Ada ! Ada !” he said in a whisper. 

In his voice was a singular vibrant accent — intense, 
eager, yet the words had the quality of a sacrament and 
a consecration. 

He rose, thrust the diary into his pocket and went 
into the house, ascending the stair to a small room at 
the end of the hall. The door was ajar and a dim light 
showed within. He listened, then pushed the door 
wider and entered. A white nursery bed stood in one 
corner, and Gordon noiselessly placed a chair beside it 
and sat down, his elbow on his knee and his chin in his 
hand, looking at the little face against the pillow, the 
tiny fist lying on the coverlid. 

Gazing, his deeply carved lips moulded softly, a sense 
of the overwhelming miracle of life possessed him. 
This small fabric was woven of his own flesh. He saw 
his own curving mouth, his full chin, his brow ! Some 
day those- hands would cling to his, those lips would 
frame the word ^Tather.” What of life’s pitfalls, of its 
tragedies, awaited this new being he had brought into 
the world ? 

He sighed, and as if in answer, the baby sighed too. 
The sound smote him strangely. Was there some oc- 
cult sympathy between them? Her birthright was not 
only of flesh, but of spirit. Had she also share in his 
isolated heart, his wayward impulses, his passionate 
pride ? 

At length he took out the diary and opening it on his 


THE CASTAWAY 


103 


knee, began to write — lines whose feeling swelled from 
some great wave of tenderness : 

“Ada! my one sweet daughter! if a name 
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine. 

Whate’er of earth divide us I shall claim 
Not tears, hut tenderness to answer mine: 

Go where I will, to me thou art the same — 

A loved regret which I would not resign. 

There are but two things in my destiny, — 

A world to roam through, and a home with thee, 

I can reduce all feelings hut this one; 

And that I would not; — for at length I see 
Such scenes as those wherein my life begun. 

The earliest — even the only paths for me — 

Had I but sooner learned the crown to shun, 

I had been better than I now can be; 

The passions which have torn me would have died; 

I had not suffered, and thou hadst not sighed. 

I feel almost at times as I have felt 
In happy childhood; trees, and flowers and brooks 
Which do remember me of where I dwelt 
Ere my young mind was sacriflced to books. 

Come as of yore upon me, and can melt 
My heart with recognition of their looks; 

Till even at moments I have thought to see 
Some living thing to love — but none like thee. 

With false ambition what had I to do? 

Little with' love, and least of all with fame. 

And yet they came unsought, and with me grew. 

And made me all which they can make — a name. 

Yet this was not the end I did pursue; 

Surely I once beheld a nobler aim. 

Yet if thou help me And it — even so 
Shall I be glad that I have purchased woe!” 


104 


THE CASTAWAY 


The door of the room adjoining opened and a figure 
dressed in white appeared. He rose and passed through. 

‘You wished me, Annabel 

“I do not wish Ada disturbed. As you know, I am 
starting with her to Seaham to-morrow, and she needs 
the rest.^^ 

“I was very quiet,’^ he said almost apologetically, and 
a little wearily. 

Her critical eye had wandered to the book and pencil 
in his hand. The look was cold — glacially so — and 
disapproving, as she asked with quiet point : 

“My lord, when do you intend to give up your tire- 
some habit of versifying 

He stared at her. In all her lack of understanding, 
she had at least spared him this. Yet this was really 
what she thought! At heart she despised him for the 
only thing that to him made life endurable. She took 
no pride in his poetry, wished him a man like others of 
her circle — a dull, church-going, speech-reading, tea- 
drinking, partridge-hunting clod! A flush blurred his 
vision. 

“Surely a thin edge of contempt cutting in her 
words, “you do not intend always to do only this ? You 
are a peer, you have a seat in the Lords. You might be 
anything you choose.^^ 

“But if I am — ^what I choose?” he said difficultly. 

A chill anger lay behind her constrained manner. 
Her lips were pressed tight together. During the 
whole time of their marriage he had never seen her 
display more feeling than in that brief moment on the 
terrace at Hewstead when he had put his mother’s ring 
upon her finger. For a long time he had watched for 


THE CASTAWAY 


105 


some sign — each day feeling his heart, so savage of vi- 
tality, contract and harden under that colorless re- 
straint — till he had come to realize that the untroubled 
gentleness was only passivity, the calm strength but 
complacency as cold as the golden guinea he had treas- 
ured, that the flower he had chosen for its white fra- 
grance was a sculptured altar-lily. Now her mind 
seemed jolted from its conventional groove. The fact 
was that the constant flings of his enemies, which he 
noted with sovereign contempt, had pierced her deeply, 
wounding that love of the world^s opinion so big in her. 
And a venomous review which her mother had brought 
her that day had mingled its abuse with a strain of pity 
for her, and pity she could not bear. 

^^Why do you not choose to live like other men?’’ she 
broke out. ^^There is something so selfish, so unnatural 
in your engrossed silences, your changeable moods, your 
disregard of ordinary customs. You believe nothing 
that other men believe.” 

His face had grown weirdly white. The sudden out- 
burst had startled him. He was struggling with re- 
sentment. 

^^Cassidy’s doctrinal tracts, for instance ?” The query 
had a tinge of sarcasm. 

She bit her lips. ‘^You have no idea of reverence for 
anything. I might have guessed it that night at New- 
stead from the way you treated him! You speak your 
views on religion — ^views that I hate — openly, anywhere. 
You write and print them, too, in your verse!” 

“You are frank,” he said ; “let me be the same. What 
my brain conceives my hand shall write. If I valued 
fame, I should flatter received opinions. That I have 


106 


THE CASTAWAY 


never done ! I cannot and will not give the lie to my 
doubts, come what may/^ 

^^What right have you to have those doubts Her 
anger was rising full-fledged, and bitter-winged with 
malice. ^Why do you set yourself against all that is 
best? What do you believe in that is good, I should 
like to know ?” 

“I abhor books of religion/^ he responded steadily, 
^^and the blasphemous notions of sectaries. I have no 
belief in their absurd heresies and Thirty-nine Articles. 
I feel joy in all beautiful and sublime things. But I 
hate convention and cant and lay-figure virtue, and 
shall go on hating them to the end of the chapter.^^ 

^To the end of the chapter P’ she echoed. ^^You 
mean to do nothing more — to think of nothing but 
scribbling pretty lines on paper and making a mystery 
of yourself! What is our life to be together? What 
did you marry me for 

^^Bella!” The word was almost a cry. H married 
you for faith, not for creeds! I am as I have always 
been — I have concealed nothing. I married you for 
sympathy and understanding! I know I am not like 
other men — ^but I tried to make you love and under- 
stand me ! — I tried! Why did you marry mef^ 

For an instant the real pain in the appeal seemed to 
cleave through her icy demeanor and she made an in- 
voluntary movement. But as she hesitated, Fletcher 
knocked at the door : 

^^Mr. Sheridan, my lord, come to take you to Drury 
Lane.^" 

The words congealed the softer feeling. As the valet 
withdrew, she turned upon her husband. 


THE CASTAWAY 


lor 

^^Sheridan! and Drury Lane! That is the kind of 
company you prefer to keep 1 A doddering old man who 
falls asleep over his negus in White’s bow-window, 
coming and going here at all hours, and littering the 
library with his palsied snuff-taking.” 

A doddering old man! It was true. The soul of 
White’s and Brookes’, the first table wit and vivant of 
the kingdom, the companion of a royal prince — ^he, 
^^Sherry,” who all his life had never known ache or 
pain, not even the gout, who had out-dandied and out- 
bumpered the youngest of them — ^had lived beyond his 
time. The welcome of the gay world had dwindled to 
a grudging patronage. Gordon had more than once of 
late come between him and a low sponging-house or the 
debtors’ prison. Yet at his wife’s tone, a gleam of 
anger shot into his eyes — anger that made them steely- 
blue as sword blades. 

^^Sheridan was my friend,” he said. "My friend 
from the first, when others snarled. He is old now — 
old and failing — but he is still my friend. Is a man to 
pay no regard to loyalty or friendship ?” 

"He should have regard first to his own reputation. 
Do you? Even Brummell and Petersham and your 
choice fops of the Cocoa-Tree tavern and the Drury 
Lane committee have some thought for the world’s 
opinion. But you have none. You care nothing for 
what it thinks of you or of your morality.” 

"Morality!” he repeated slowly. "I never heard the 
word before from anybody who was not a rascal that 
used it for a purpose !” 

"Why will you sit silent,” she continued^ "and hear 


108 


THE CASTAWAY 


yourself defamed everywhere without a word? Why 
will you not defend yourself ?” 

He shrugged his shoulders, the flash of indignation 
past. She had touched the point of least response. The 
shrug angered her even more than his satiric reply: 

^^What man can bear refutation?’’ 

^^You seem to think it beneath your dignity to deny 
slander,” she went on. ^^You always did. I thought 
it would be different after we were married. But it 
has grown worse. The papers print more and more 
horrible things of you, and you do not care — either for 
yourself or for me !” 

He gazed at her with a curious intentness. 

^^Surely you pay no heed to such irresponsible tales ?” 

^Tf they were all! Ho you suppose I do not hear 
what people say besides ? They do not spare my ears ! 
Ho you think I do not know the stories — what they used 
to say of your bachelor affairs — with Lady Oxford, and 
Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster — and Caro Lamb ?” 

^Ts there none more recent?” A bitter smile had 
appeared, called by the veiled insinuation in her tone. 

Another name flew to her tongue, for malicious ru- 
mor had credited him with a footlight amour. ^Y'es — 
Jane Clermont!” 

A frown of incredulity and annoy hung blackly on 
his brow an instant. Had this baseless gratuitous fling 
gone beyond the circle of Hrury Lane gossipers? Had 
it even reached his wife’s ears ? Aloud he said : 

^^Eeally, I can scarcely hold myself responsible for 
silly chatterers who are determined to Kochefoucauld 
my motives. I seem to be fast becoming the moral 
^sop of the community. I am judged by what I pre- 


THE CASTAWAY 


109 


sume Dr. Cassidy would call a dramatic Calvinism — 
predestined damnation without a sinner^s own fault.” 

Her control was gone. She could not trust herself to 
speak further and turned away. He waited a moment 
in the doorway, but she did not move, and with an even 
‘^good night” he left her. 

At the foot of the stair, during Gordon’s painful 
interview, a black-gowned woman had noiselessly bent 
over the hall table. A letter, arrived by the post, had 
been laid there by Fletcher for his master. She lifted 
it and examined it closely. The address was written 
in a peculiar, twirly handwriting, on blue-tinted paper 
that bore in each corner the device of a cockle-shell. 
She listened, then passed with it into the library. 

The room was unlighted, but a spring fire fiickered 
on the hearth. She caught up a paper-knife and crouch- 
ing by the hearth held its thin blade in the fiame. When 
the metal was warmed, she softened the edges of the 
seal and with deftness that betrayed long practice, split 
it ofi without its breaking, opened the note and read it. 
Her basilisk eyes lighted with satisfaction — the tri- 
umph of a long quest rewarded. Then she warmed the 
wax again, replaced it, and as it hardened, broke it 
across as if the letter had been opened in the ordinary 
manner. 

As Mrs. Clermont rose to her feet, a thin, severe 
figure stood on the threshold. She saw with relief 
that it was Lady Noel, and handed her the letter with 
a feline smile. 

^Terhaps your ladyship will know if this should 


110 


THE CASTAWAY 


be preserved/^ she said. found it just now on the 
floor.^^ 

Lady Hoehs eyes glittered at sight of the cockle- 
shells. She read it hastily by the firelight. Her look 
was coldly yet triumphantly malignant as she leaned 
forward. 

^Tut an outer wrapper on this/^ she ordered in an 
undertone, ^^seal it, and take it at once to Melbourne 
House. Give it into William Lamb’s hands — ^to no one 
else. Do you understand ?” 

^^Yes, my lady,” the other replied, and left her noise- 
lessly, as Gordon came slowly down the stair. 

have left your lordship this evening’s Courier'* 
said Lady Noel, forbiddingly. 

^Thank you,” he answered and looked at it carelessly. 
On its exposed page a pencil had marked an article of 
considerable length whose title was: ^^The Poetical 
Works of a Peer of the Eealm, viewed in connection 
with Christianity and the Obligations of Social Life.” 

Its final paragraph was underscored with meaning 
heaviness : 

“We have less remorse in quoting the noble lord,” — he 
read — “for, by this time, we believe the whole world is in- 
clined to admit that he can pay no compliment so valu- 
able as his censure, nor offer any insult so intolerable as 
his praise. Crede Gordon is the noble lord’s armorial 
motto: ‘Trust Gordon’ is the translation in the Red-Book. 
We cannot but admire the ingenuity with which his lord- 
ship has converted the good faith of his ancestors into a 
sarcasm on his own duplicity.” 

A simmer of rage rose in Gordon’s throat. He tore 
the paper twice across, flung it down, and passed on to 


THE CASTAWAY 


111 


the drawing-room. Seeing no one, he rang for the valet. 

^^Where is Mr. Sheridan V’ he demanded. 

Fletcher was carrying a wine-glass and seemed sur- 
prised at the query. 

^^He was here five minutes ago, your lordship. Mr. 
Sheridan looked very bad when I let him in, sir. I 
was just getting him this brandy.^^ 

“I suppose he tired of waiting,^^ thought Gordon. 
^^The Clermont has a new part to-night, and Sherry’s 
bound for Fops’ Alley.” 

As he buttoned his great-coat, he heard a cry from 
the valet, and ran into the drawing-room to find 
Fletcher bending over the form of the old wit, prostrate 
on the fioor, moveless, speechless, his face swept by a 
bluish pallor. 

^^Good God !” cried Gordon. ^‘Help me lift him and 
fetch a doctor at once !” 

With Fletcher’s aid the old man was placed upon a 
sofa, and Gordon loosed the stiff neckerchief, put a 
cushion under the recumbent head and chafed the sick 
man’s hands. 

The physician looked grave when he came. 

^'A paralytic stroke,” he said. ^^He must be taken 
home.” 


CHAPTER XV 


THE EITFALL 

It was later evening. Gordon sat in the library, the 
diary in which he had written those lines to Ada open 
before him. 

Since the scene with Annabel whose dark aftermath 
had been the illness of his old friend, a deeper sense 
of pain had oppressed him. His marriage had sprung 
from an inarticulate divining of the infinite need of 
his nature for such a spiritual infiuence as he had im- 
agined she possessed. It had ended in failure. A 
mood of hopelessness was upon him now as he wrote: 

^^Man is a battle-ground between angel and devil. 
Tenderness and roughness — sentiment, sensuality — ^soar- 
ing and grovelling, dirt and deity — all mixed in one 
compound of inspired clay. Marriage is the hostage 
he gives to his better nature. What if this hostage con- 
spire with his evil side to betray the citadel ? 

^^Xature made me passionate of temper but with an 
innate tendency to the love of good in my mainspring 
of mind. I am an atom jarring between these great 
discords. Sympathy is the divine lifter — ^the supreme 
harmonizer. And shall that evade me forever? Where 
shall I find it ? In the cheap intrigue that absorbs half 
( 113 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


113 


the life of those around me? Shall I turn to the fair- 
est of those blandishments, and, like the drunkard, for- 
get my penury in the hiccough and happiness of in- 
toxication 

The thought of the delicate coquetry of Jane Cler- 
mont and of the ripe beauty of Lady Caroline Lamb 
flashed across the page, an insistent vision. He saw the 
latter’s eyes, eager and inviting, as he had so often 
seen them at Melbourne House, when he had turned 
from them to a paler beauty. He thought of a past 
season when the whirlwind of her infatuation had wound 
their two names in gossip that had never tired. Love 
with her would have counted all sacrifice cheap, all ob- 
stacles gossamer. Could such a passion yield him what 
he craved? Was he bound to live pent within the pali- 
sade a priest’s ceremony had reared about him ? Of what 
virtue were honor and faith to a bond where love was 
not? 

But this picture faded as he wrote across it the an- 
swer to its question : 

‘^No ! I will not. I will keep the bond. Yet I and 
the mother of my child are far apart as the two poles ! 
I am a toy of inborn unbeliefs, linked to unemotional 
goodness, merciless virtue and ice-girdled piety. I am 
asked to bow down to arcana which to me are bagatelles. 
As well believe in Eoberts the Prophet, or Breslau the 
Conjurer if he had lived in the reign of Tiberius ! The 
everlasting why which stares me in the face is an unfor- 
givable thing. Yet to yield — ^to go the broad, easy way 
of conventional belief and smug morality — to shackle 
the doubts I feel ! To anchor myself to the frozen mole- 
hills and write, like other men, glozed comfortable lines 


114 


THE CASTAWAY 


on which friend and foe can batten alike, and with which 
reviewer and reviewee, rhinoceros and elephant, mam- 
moth and megalonyx can lie quietly together 

He threw down his pen, and leaned his forehead in 
his hands. 

^'Would to God I had nothing better in this soul of 
mine he exclaimed. ^^The rest of the world can game 
and kiss and besot themselves in peace. Only I — I — 
must writhe and struggle unsatisfied !” 

‘^Ther^is a carboy outside, your lordship, who wishes 
to see you.^^ 

‘^A carboy Gordon raised his head. “What does he 
want 

“He says he has a message for your lordship’s own 
hands. He’s a likely-looking lad.” 

“Very well, show him in. Hasn’t Eushton returned 
from Mr. Sheridan’s yet ?” he added. 

“Yes, my lord. But Lady Hoel sent him out again 
with a letter for Sir Ealph to his club.” 

Gordon heaved a sigh of relief. “Sherry must be 
better,” he thought. He waited on the threshold till 
Fletcher ushered in a slim figure in the round coat and 
buttons of a carman. His chin was muffled in a coarse 
neckerchief, and a rumpled mass of brown hair showed 
beneath the edges of the cloth cap whose visor was pulled 
over his eyes. 

“Well, my lad?” 

The boy stood still, twisting his fingers in his jacket 
till the valet had retired. Then suddenly as the door 
closed, the cap was snatched off, a mass of brown hair 
dropped curling about the boyish shoulders — the silver- 
buttoned jacket fell open, revealing a softly rounded 


THE CASTAWAY 


115 


throat and delicate slope of breast. Gordon uttered an 
astonished and bewildered exclamation: 

^^Caro ! What mad masquerade is this T’ 

She drew back under the pale intensity, the con- 
trolled agitation of his face. ^Torgive me! forgive 
me!^^ Tumult was looking from her eyes, and her 
shoulders were heaving. could not help it ! I have 
tried to forget you during all this past year. I cannot 
bear to see you only at Melbourne House and at parties 
and on the street. How pale you always are !” she went 
on. ^Tjike a statue of marble, and your dark hair such 
a contrast. I never see you without wanting to cry. If 
any painter could paint me your face as it is, I would 
give an3rthing I possess V’ 

She had touched his hand, but he drew it away 
sharply, feeling a black sense of entanglement in the 
touch. 

^Tiady Caroline I This is unthinkable ! To come 
here in that dress — ^here, to this house, is sheer mad- 
ness ! I did not imagine you capable of such folly 

^TTou think I am weak and selfish,^^ she pleaded. 
^TTou have always thought I did not struggle to with- 
stand my feelings. But indeed, indeed, it is more than 
human nature can bear I I loved you before you mar- 
ried Bella — loved you better than name, than religion, 
than any prospects on earth ! You must have loved me 
more if you had never seen her ! She has never cared 
for you as I do.^^ 

He darted a glance at the door. His wife! A re- 
bellious anger rose in him at being thrust into such a 
predicament. 

ou have taken a strange way to show that love.^^ 


116 


THE CASTAWAY 


^^Oh, I could show it other ways She was looking 
at him with tremulous daring. ‘^They used to say that 
once in the East, to prove to a Greek girl that you loved 
her, you wounded yourself in the breast. Would such a 
thing make you believe how I love you 

At that moment both heard a voice in the hallway. 

^^Bella !” he said in a whisper. 

‘^^Oh, I thought she had gone to Seaham,^^ she 
breathed. ^Y’ou must believe I did not know she was 
here!’^ She buttoned the coat over her breast with 
nervous fingers and put on the cloth cap. The sound 
had thrown her into a paroxysm of dread. 

^^Quick, quick she urged. 

^^Hot that way. Here, to the garden entrance He 
caught her hand, drew her sharply toward the rear door 
and opened it. 

The retreat was closed. Lady Hoel, with sparkling 
eyes and spare figure leaning on her cane, faced them 
at the threshold, her gaze leaping with flickering tri- 
umph. At the same instant Annabel entered by the 
other door. 

The trap had sprung, the joints were working with 
precision. Gordon’s first glance at his wife’s face told 
him there had been betrayal, for the look he saw was 
not of surprise or wonder, though its indignant lines 
set themselves deeper in presence of the visible fact. 
The jaws of this trap had not been set by accident. How 
had Lady Hoel and Annabel guessed ? The latter’s eyes 
were on the carboy^s costume, as if she would convince 
herself doubly by every evidence of her senses. The 
grim figure on the threshold pointed one thin fore- 
finger at the shrinking form in the boy’s dress. 


THE CASTAWAY 


117 


*^ake off that cap 

Annabel took a quick step forward, as Lady Caroline 
snatched off the covering to show a face flaming with 
deflance. ^Taro I” she exclaimed — ^^Caro 

As she looked from one to the other, contempt rose 
in a frigid wave over her features and she drew her- 
self up to her full height and stood stonily erect. • 

Lady Noel laughed with an echoing amusement, as 
Lady Caroline burst out in a torrent : 

^You can hate and despise me if you want to, Bella. 
It can make no difference to me. Why did you come 
between us in the first place? You never loved him, 
at least. You had nothing to give him but that hor- 
rible virtuous indifference of yours — ^nothing! noth- 
ing! You have nothing to give him now. You have 
made his life wretched with your perfectness and your 
conventions ! Everybody knows that !” 

AnnabeFs look swept her with its sharp edge of scorn ; 
then flashed on Gordon, who stood composed, motion- 
less, in a grip of repression. 

^Ts it not enough for you to have made me the butt 
of your daily caprice, your shameless atheism?’^ — she 
drove the words at her husband — Yor all London to 
gossip of your social ^conquests’ and your dissolute af- 
fairs? Is this not enough — ^that you offer me the final 
dishonor of such planned meetings, under this roof ?” 

^Tt was not his fault!” cried Lady Caroline. ^^Bella! 
I will tell you the truth !” 

Gordon put out his hand with a gesture of protest 
as Lady Noel laughed again, musically, maliciously. 

A knock at the door silenced all voices. It heralded 


118 


THE CASTAWAY 


Fletcher, whose eyes, habitually discreet, seemed to see 
no further than his master. 

^^Mr. Somers is outside, sir, with the Melbourne 
coach, to wait for Lady Caroline Lamb.^^ 

Lady Caroline’s blank, terror-struck eyes turned to 
Gordon, and she began to tremble. She ran and pulled 
aside the portiere from the window. She shrank back 
with a gasping cry, for she recognized the coach drawn 
up at the curb, whose lighted lanterns, reflected from 
fawn-covered panels emblazoned with the Melbourne 
arms, lit plainly the flgure of William Lamb’s con- 
fidential factotum waiting by its step. Her husband 
had known she was coming there ! He had sent Somers 
instead of the coachman — ^he even knew of the carboy’s 
dress ! 

A slow change passed over her face. Fear and dread 
had shown there an instant pallidly — dread of the 
malignant fury she knew lay couched beneath the cold 
exterior of her husband; now these were swallowed up 
in a look more burning, more intense, more terrible — a 
look of sudden, savage certainty. She turned this new 
countenance upon Gordon. 

^^So!” she said in a stifled voice. ^^You sent my 
letter to my husband! You did not count on a scene 
with Bella — ^but for me who have bored you, you took 
this cruel way to end it all ! Well, you have succeeded. 
How I know Madame de Stael was right when she called 
you ^demon.’ You are without a heart. How I have 
loved you — and now I hate you. I hate you !” 

He made no reply. Her letter? As she spoke he had 
had a vision of Mrs. Clermont’s noiseless movements 
and thin secret mouth, and suspicion clogged his tongue. 


THE CASTAWAY 


119 


Lady Caroline looked at him an instant with a shud- 
der as she passed out. shall always hate you/^ she 
said with vengeful emphasis. They heard the outer 
door close heavily behind her and the dulled sound of 
wheels. 

As Gordon turned again to meet his wife’s flinty gaze, 
the footman appeared. 

‘^Sir Kalph wished me to say he would answer at 
once, your ladyship,” he said to Lady N oel. 

‘^There was no change in Mr. Sheridan’s condition, 
Eushton?” asked Gordon, 

^^Change, my lord?” the boy stammered. ^^Why, 
I — He looked from him to the others, his jaw 
dropped. 

Lady Noel shifted her cane. received Eushton’s 
report. I thought it a pity anything should interfere 
with your lordship’s evening engagement.” 

^^Mr. Sheridan was thought to be dying, my lord,” 
said the boy, ^^and had asked for you.” 


CHAPTEK XVI 


THE DESPOILING 

As his hackney-coach sped through the night, Gor- 
don’s anger at the inhumanity that had kept from him 
the sick man’s message, faded gradually into a duller 
resentment that held most of grief. 

The words of his wife recurred to his mind: “A 
doddering old man!” She had seen only the uncer- 
tain walk, the trembling hand, the dying down of the 
brilliance and fire into crumbling ashes. Xot the past, 
the career in Parliament, the masterly craft of the play- 
wright, the years of loyalty to his friends. Social 
morality had been a lifelong jest to Sheridan — a verita- 
ble ^^School for Scandal” from which he drew his 
choicest hon-mots, yet his whole character had been 
sweetened with the milk of human kindness. Annabel 
walked a moral princess of parallelograms, viciously vir- 
tuous, mercilessly indexible. ^^And the greatest of these 
is charity” — ^whose was it? Annabel’s or Sheridan’s? 

On the steps of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West stood Dr. 
Cassidy with his friend, the under-curate, and he caught 
a glimpse of the coach that whirled by. 

‘TTonder,” said Cassidy, ^^rides London’s poet-apos- 

( 120 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


121 


tate, known by his limp and his profligacy. The dev- 
otees are tiring. How long can the idol stand?’’ 

The other turned to gaze. ^^Woe unto you, when all' 
men shall speak well of you!” he quoted, ^Tor so did 
their fathers to the false prophets!” He also was a 
sanctimonious young man. 

The house that sheltered the old wit was dark as 
Gordon ascended the steps, and the hollow echoes from 
the knocker, reverberating through the hall; chilled him 
with dread. ^^He died an hour ago, your lordship,” the 
servant said. 

An hour! And but for the delay, he would have 
been in time! As Gordon entered, a prey to this re- 
flection, a thick-set man dressed shabbily, ascended the 
steps. He had once been the dead man’s groom, he ex- 
plained, and begged awkwardly to be allowed to look 
upon his face. The servant hesitated, but at the grief 
in the stranger’s voice, he let him in, and the new-comer 
pushed quickly past Gordon and entered the darkened 
bedroom before him. 

There his profound emotion vanished. He drew a 
bailiff’s wand from beneath his coat and touching the 
rigid figure that lay there, proclaimed with gruff tri- 
umph : arrest this body in the king’s name, for five 

hundred pounds.” 

The exultant bailiff started at the touch of fingers 
gripping his wrist. Something in Gordon’s face, though 
now distorted with feeling, was familiar. 

^^Why,” he said, ‘T’m a turnkey, if you ain’t the gent 
that took the young ladies into the Fleet!” 

^‘Come with me,” rasped Gordon between his teeth, 
and the bailiff followed. In the next room he drew from 


122 


THE CASTAWAY 


his pocket a draft from John Murray, his publisher, for 
four hundred and eighty guineas. Without a word he 
indorsed this and handed it to the bailiff, who scruti- 
nized it and counted out the four pounds change. 

^^iN’ow go said Gordon. 

The clock of St. Paul’s was pealing the hour of 
eleven as the haclmey-coach drove back to the house on 
Piccadilly Terrace. A light low-lying mist softened the 
outlines of the alley-ways and purified the filth of the 
street. Overhead, it frayed into a night of wonderful 
starshine, where, beyond the soiled sordidness of the 
clamorous city, the sky spread a web of diamonds and 
sifted gold dust. 

While the wheels rattled onward, Gordon’s white 
whimsical face, lifted to those presences above the smoky 
roofs, gradually lost its bitter glaze and expressed a 
curious wistfulness — a vague, appealing weariness and 
speculation. 

^^Matter is eternal,” he reflected, ^^always changing, 
but reproduced and eternal. May not mind be also ? Is 
its inner spark celestial? Or, like the cells that pro- 
duce it, is it a creature of the mold, doomed to ex- 
tinction with the brain, sinking as the candle-flame 
perishes when the wick falls? I remember when I 
viewed the planets through Herschel’s telescope and 
saw all at once that they were worlds. What has eter- 
nity to do with the congregated cosmic dust we call 
mankind? What are our little passions and resent- 
ments before the least of those stars ?” 

His gaze and his thought fell from the sky. 

Had he any right to the stubborn pride which would 


THE CASTAWAY 


123 


not bemean itself by self-defense? Would his own si- 
lence not abet the calculating hatred of Lady Noel’s and 
add to that monstrous estrangement that was steadily 
carr3ring his soul further and further from the soul of 
Annabel ? The question of whether his wife believed or 
disbelieved aside, was he justified in such a course now ? 
A softer feeling took possession of him. Appearances 
had been against him. To speak could make the mat- 
ter no worse for Lady Caroline. He would go to Anna- 
bel and assure her of the truth. Perhaps even out of 
such a catastrophe as to-night’p might arise a truer and 
a nearer confidence. 

He threw off his great-coat in the empty hall and 
ascended the stair. The door of the chamber where 
sat the little white bed was open. He went in. The 
lamp still shed its radiance on the pillow, but the tiny 
fragrant mould where a baby head had lain, now held 
only a note, bearing Gordon’s name. 

With a puzzled look he tore it open. 

A white anguish spread over his features. A cry 
broke from his lips. He fiung wide the door of his 
wife’s room — it was empty. He ran down the stair, 
where the footman met him, turning a wondering face 
to his question. 

^^My lady went out with Lady Noel, my lord,” Eush- 
ton answered, ^^and took the baby with her. Sir Ealph 
came for them a half-hour ago. Here is a letter he left 
for your lordship.” 

Gordon took it mechanically and read the few curt 
lines that burned into his sight like points of pain. It 
was the end, then ! Annabel had gone, not to return — 
gone with only a hastily pencilled note for farewell, 


124 


THE CASTAWAY 


laid with refinement of cruelty on his baby’s pillow! 
That, and these blunt, peremptory lines of her father’s 
menace ! 

He found himself at length in the library, feeling 
his way blindly to his chair. What to do ? Could there 
be reconciliation? Could she, with her cold prudent 
resolve, her fixed principles squared mathematically, her 
starched life which counted even forgiveness a Christ- 
like sin, retract a step of such moment? He told him- 
self it was not to be hoped for; her pride would make 
her decision irrevocable. 

What then? To pursue? Invoke the law to restore 
his child? Plunge into publicity to set right his own 
name ? When had he cared for reputation in the world’s 
eyes I Hare her father’s threat ? Drag his wife’s name 
and his own in the dust and infamy of the courts, and 
bare the festering sore of his heart to the world ? Dare it, 
and shut the gate of society on another woman, too, 
whose punishment already would be more than she could 
bear? Most of all, cloud his daughter’s young years 
with a lasting stain ? 

He rose and paced the floor, his step halting, fight- 
ing out the struggle. Once he sat down and wrote, 
scarce seeing the lines his pen traced — and rose and 
paced the floor again. He took the black phial from 
its drawer, but put it back. There was something in 
him which in this fierce crisis disdained to blunt the 
pain. 

After a while he left the library and went slowly 
up the stair to . the little carved white bed. He sank 
into a chair and hid his face in his folded arms. The 
agony of childlessness came down on him. Home! 


THE CASTAWAY 


125 


A year ago how fondly he had desired it ! Yet it had 
become the winding-sheet of his heart ! 

Mrs. Clermont saw him sitting there as she passed 
the door. By Lady NoePs command, she had waited 
to pack some smaller articles, and was now ready for 
departure. 

On the lower floor she entered the library for a last 
survey. Some loose sheets of paper were scattered on 
the desk, the ink scarce yet dry on them. Laying them 
together she slowly deciphered the tense, uneven hand- 
writing. The lines had been dragged from the deeps 
of Gordon’s despairing, from his pent grief that found 
its natural vent in verse. Was it what it seemed — ^his 
heart’s final word to Annabel? Or rather was it a last 
yearning call to the woman he had dreamed her to be — 
an adieu to his lost ideal of her ? 

Mrs. Clermont’s eyes gloated. Two spots of dull 
vermilion grew in her sallow cheeks. Her hands shook 
with the delight of an inspiration. Bending over the 
table she muttered the written lines : 

“Fare thee well! and if forever. 

Still forever, fare thee well — ” 

How carefully she had gathered them all along— 
these garish strands of scandal which had come to her 
hands ! How deftly her fingers had cast them here and 
there in the woof of dislike the great loom of London 
had been weaving! This was a thread of bright red 
for her to use. What if the poem were printed — now, 
now, with the first rumor of the separation ? She could 
fancy what would be the world’s verdict on such an ad- 


126 


THE CASTAWAY. 


dress, penned in the first hour of his bereavement, and 
offered to the public ostensibly by his own hand. Pub- 
licity would be just the note to make the whole strain 
ring false. It would recoil upon him in open disap- 
proval and contempt! It would rouse new voices in 
the clarion-tongued clamor of abuse that her jubilant 
ear had heard swelling through the past year — forge a 
new link in the chain that would bind him to disgrace, 
the disgrace she believed he had had share in heaping 
upon her niece I 

The mainspring of the woman’s hatred leaped. The 
world had coupled their names long ago, when the girl 
had first stolen away from the dreary Godwin house to 
the glamour and allurements of Drury Lane ! And the 
world no doubt told the truth. If she could help to ruin 
him, line for line, name and fame — as he had ruined 
Jane Clermont! 

In her vision rose the stooped figure of William God- 
win, Jane’s foster-father. He hated Gordon, she knew 
— and he had a connection with the Courier, the bitter- 
est of them all. 

Fletcher was in the lower hall as Mrs. Clermont 
passed out the street door. He knew the catastrophe 
that had befallen. How his honest old eyes were full of 
grief and perplexity. 

It was long past midnight when he ascended to his 
master’s room. Gordon had thrown off his clothing and 
was stretched on the bed. He was asleep. 

As the grizzled valet’s eyes rested on the recumbent 
figure, he could see that one foot — ^the lame one — ^was 
uncovered. Through all the years of his service, he had 
never seen the member which Gordon’s sensitiveness 


THE CASTAWAY 


127 


concealed. He had often wondered curiously what was 
the nature of the deformity. How did it look? 

Eletcher turned away, took a counterpane from a 
chair and with face averted, drew it over the uncovered 
foot. Then he shaded the candle and went out, and as 
he went, a tear splashed down his seamed and weather- 
beaten cheek. 


CHAPTEK XVII 


THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 

Over the great, crow-footed face of London, full of 
tragedies, a heavy fog had fallen. Dismal and murky, 
it lay like a bodiless incubus, shutting out the shining 
sun and the sweet smells of spring and showers. To 
Gordon, in the house on Piccadilly Terrace, the color- 
less dun had seemed to reflect his own feelings. He was 
numbed. His mind was stumbling through wastes of 
dumb protest. 

The links of Mrs. Clermont’s forging had held. The 
story of his wife’s flight which the Courier had dis- 
played on its front page had been a masterpiece of dark 
hints and veiled insinuations. To Gordon, who had 
read it with aching eyeballs, it had seemed printed in 
monstrous symbols of flame. 

It was to prove the opening note of a chorus whose 
vicious strength he had not comprehended till the fol- 
lowing day, when the avalanche of abuse broke over him 
with the morning newspapers. Every personal grudge, 
every pygmean hater of success, every cowering enmity 
that had sickened under his splendor had roused. He 
shut himself in the library, telling Fletcher he was at 
home to no one, and read grimly the charges they pre- 
( 138 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


129 


ferred: he had carried his unprincipled profligacy into 
his home and ensconced beneath his own roof a Drury 
I;ane inamorata; he had persecuted his wife with in- 
human cruelties, denied her the offices of religion, fired, 
pistols in her bedroom to frighten her while she slept — 
these were the lightest of their accusations. 

Gordon’s mind, racing over the pages, was catching 
glimpses of heterogeneous elements which blended in 
a dim, dread futurity. He saw suddenly the inertia 
of Annabel’s passive correctness — saw why his own 
name, with its eccentric dazzle, had stood forth blackly 
against her even ways, her spotless, conventional pure^ 
ness. The mute contrast had always been there, and he 
had suffered accordingly. To the world she stood a 
martyr — a stony pillar, once a woman, who had looked 
back to catch some lurid fume from doomed cities sink- 
ing under Dead Sea waters. 

Gould the great world credit these monstrous calum- 
nies? Might the reiterate malice of the public prints 
infect his nearer acquaintances — ^those at whose tables 
he had sat almost weekly, the cliques of the clubs, the 
gay set at Almack’s, the circle of Melbourne House? 

He drew a sharp breath, for he thought of William 
Lamb, heir to the Melbourne title, from whom he had 
daily expected a cartel. He would leave no path of re- 
venge untrod; nor would Lady Caroline. Could their 
disassociate hatred envenom even the few for whose 
opinion he cared ? 

The Courier had reserved its bitterest attack. On the 
second day it published the stanzas entitled ^Tare Thee 
Well,” signed by Gordon’s name. He saw them with 
a strange sensation, his mind grasping for the cords he 


130 


THE CASTAWAY 


felt enmeshing him, his eyes fully opened now to the 
devilish ingenuity of his persecution. 

But he himself stood appalled at the deadly effect ol 
this attack. Innuendo was thrown aside; invective took 
its place. Paragraph, pamphlet and caricature held the 
lines up to odium. The hypocrisy of a profligate! A 
-cheap insincere appeal to mawkish sympathy ! A taste- 
less vulgar parade of a poseur strumming his heart- 
strings on the highway ! 

It came to Gordon with a start that during the past 
forty-eight hours he had forgotten his mail. He rang 
the bell and asked for his letters. 

^^There are none, my lord.” 

No letters? And daily for a year his table had been 
deluged with tinted and perfumed billets crested and 
sealed with signets of great houses. No letters ! 

‘^Who has called to-day ?” 

Fletcher’s honest eyes could scarcely meet his master’s. 
^^Mr. Hobhouse called this morning, and Mr. Dallas this 
afternoon.” 

^^That is all?” 

^TTes, your lordship.” 

Gordon went to the flreplace and stared down dazedly 
into the embers. He had been a santon ; now he was an 
Ishmaelite, a mark for the thrust of every scurrillous 
poetaster who wielded a pen — a chartered Blue-Beard — 
another Mirabeau whom the feudalists discovered to be 
a monster! The world had learned with pleasure that 
he was a wretch. Tom Moore was in Ireland, Sheridan 
dead. Of all he knew, only two rallied to his support: 
Hobhouse, the sturdy, undemonstrative, likable com- 
panion of his early travels, and — Dallas ! 


THE CASTAWAY 


131 


Gordon langlied bitterly. He had been London’s 
favorite. How, without justice or reason, it covered 
him with obloquy and went by on the other side. 

There had followed days and nights of mental agony, 
of inner crying-out for reprisal — ^hours of fierce longing 
for his child, when he had sought relief in walking un- 
frequented streets from dark to dawn, in desultory com- 
position, more often in the black bottle that lay in the 
library drawer. Meager news had reached his sister, 
and a brave, true message from her was the only cooling 
dew that fell into his fiery Sahara of suffering. A 
packet left by a messenger roused him to a white fury. 
It was from Sir Samuel Eomilly, the solicitor under 
his retainer. Sir Samuel had reversed his allegiance. 
His curt note inclosed a draft of separation proposed 
by Sir Ealph Milbanke, and though couched in judicial 
phrases, voiced a threat unmistakable. 

Almost a round of the clock Gordon sat with this 
paper before him, his meals untasted. His wife at that 
moment was with Ada — ^his child and hers! — at her 
father’s house in Seaham. She had read the attacks — 
knew their falseness — ^knew and would not deny. How 
he knew why. What she wanted was written in that 
document: freedom and her daughter. She would en- 
gulf him in calumny only so the world would justify 
her in her self-righteous desertion. And lest he put 
it to the test, lest he refuse to be condemned unheard 
and demand the arbitrament of an open though pre- 
judiced tribunal, she threatened him with what further 
veiled accusations he could not imagine. Good God! 
Was there anything more to accuse him of ? Better any 


132 


THE CASTAWAY 


appeal to publicity now than this step which shut him 
from Ada ! 

Suppose he made this appeal. There was no justice 
in public opinion. In his case, it was already poisoned. 
Already it dubbed him a Nero, a Caligula, a Eichard 
Third ! Add to the present outcry new and more terri- 
ble charges — ^the formless insinuations of Sir Ealph — 
and what might not its verdict be ? It would justify his 
wife, applaud the act which robbed him of his child! 
And these dark indictments, though false, would be 
no less an evil legacy for that daughter whom he loved 
with every fiber of his being. 

To consent to lose Ada forever — or to risk both her 
loss and her blight. To battle, and jeopardize her life’s 
happiness perhaps — or to yield and give tacit admission 
to the worst the world said of him, her father I 

Night fell. At last he stirred and his square shoul- 
ders set. ^^To wait,” he said — “to wait and be patient. 
That is all that is left. WTiatever I must do, the world 
shall not see me cringe. The celebrity I have wrung 
from it has been in the teeth of all opinions and pre- 
judices. I will show no white feather now 1” 

He laid the document aside, rose and looked in the 
glass. His face was haggard, worn; there were listless 
lines under his eyes. He summoned Fletcher and 
dressed with all his old scrupulousness — such a cos- 
tume as he had worn the afternoon he had waked to 
fame. With a thought, perhaps, of that day, he drew a 
carnation through his buttonhole. Then he left the 
house and turned his steps toward Drury Lane. 

The fog was gone, the air lay warm and pleasant, 
and a waxing moon shamed the street lamps. He 


THE CASTAWAY 


133 


passed down St. James Street, and came opposite 
White’s Club. He had no thought of entering. Lord 
Petersham descended the steps as he approached, kis 
dress exquisite, his walking-stick held daintily between 
thumb and forefinger like a pinch of snuffs The fop’s 
eyes met Gordon’s in a blank stare. 

A group of faces showed in the bow-window and for 
an instant Gordon hesitated, the old perverse spirit 
tempting him to enter, but he resisted it. 

The first act was on when he reached Drury Lane 
Theater, and the lobby was empty save for the usual 
loungers and lackeys. The doors of the pit were open 
and he stood behind the rustling colors of Fops’ Alley. 
He scanned the house curiously, himself unobserved, 
noting many a familiar face in the boxes. 

Night after night the pit had roused to the veteran 
actor Kean. Night after night. Fops’ Alley had fur- 
nished its quota of applause for a far smaller part, 
played with grace and sprightliness — ^by Jane Cler- 
mont, the favorite of the greenroom. Her first entrance 
formed a finish to the act now drawing to a close. To 
Gordon’s overwrought senses to-night there seemed 
some strange tenseness in the air. Here and there heads 
drew together whispering. The boxes were too quiet. 

As the final tableau arranged itself, and Jane ad- 
vanced slowly from the wings, there was none of the 
usual signs of approval. Instead a disturbed shuffle 
made itself heard. She began her lines smiling. An 
ugly murmur overran the pit, and she faltered. 

Instantly a man’s form leaned over the edge of a 
box and hissed. The watcher, staring from the shadow 
of the lobby, recognized him with a quick stab of sig- 


134 


THE CASTAWAY 


nificanee — was William Lamb. The action seemed 
a concerted signal. Some one laughed. An undulate 
hiss swept over the house like a nest of serpents. Even 
some of the boxes swelled its volume. 

Jane shrank, looking frightenedly about her, bewil- 
dered, her hands clutching her gown; for the pit was 
on its legs now, and epithets were hurled at the stage. 
*‘Grede Gordon T came the derisive shout — a cry taken 
up with groans and catcalls — and a walking-stick clat- 
tered across the footlights. The manager rushed upon 
the stage and the heavy curtain began to descend. 

^^The baggage said a voice near Gordon with a 
coarse laugh. ^Tt^s the one they say he had in his house 
when his wife left him. Serves her right 

Gordon’s breath caught in his throat. So this had 
been William Lamb’s way ! Yot an appeal to the court 
of ten paces — an assassin in the dark with a bloodless 
weapon to slay him in the world’s esteem ! 

He heard the din rising from the whole house, as he 
crossed the lobby and strode down the passageway lead- 
ing to the greenroom. 


CHAPTEK XVIII 


GORDON- STANDS AT BAY 

Jane Clermont had reached it before him, her eyes 
a storm of anger. She tore the silver ornaments from 
her costume, and dashed them at the feet of the man- 
ager. ‘^How dare they ! How dare they V’ she flamed. 

^“^Don’t talk!” he snapped. ^‘I must go on with the 
play or they vdll be in here in flve minutes. Don’t 
wait to change your dress— go ! go, I tell you ! Do 
you think I want my theater tumbled about my ears ?” 

He cursed as the dulled uproar came from beyond 
the dropped curtain. 

Curious eyes had turned to Gordon, faces zestful, 
relishing, as he paused in the doorway. The girl had 
not seen him. But at that moment hurried steps came 
down the passage — a youth darted past Gordon and 
threw an arm about her. 

Jane I” he cried, were there — ^Mary and I — 
we saw it all ! It is infamous !” 

A flash of instant recollection deepened the vivid 
fire in Gordon’s look as it rested on the boyish, beard- 
less figure, whose quaint dress and roving eyes, bright 
and wild like a deer’s, seemed as incongruous in that 
circle of paint and tinsel as in the squalor of the Fleet 
Prison. Shelley went on rapidly through Jane’s in- 
coherent words: 


136 


THE CASTAWAY 


^^Jane, listen! We’re not poor now. We came to 
the play to-night to tell you the news. Old Sir Bysshe, 
my grandfather, is dead and the entail comes to me. 
We sail for the continent at daybreak. Mary is wait- 
ing in the carriage. Come with us, Jane, and let Eng- 
land go.” 

On the manager’s face drops of perspiration had 
started. ^^Aye, go !” he foamed. ‘‘The quicker the bet- 
ter ! His lordship is waiting — ” 

He shrank back, the sneer throttled on his lips, for 
there was that in Gordon’s colorless features, his spark- 
ling eyes, at which the man’s tongue clove to the roof 
of his mouth. 

“George Gordon !” exclaimed Shelley under his 
breath. 

Jane’s glance had followed his and she saw the figure 
at the door for the first time, as Gordon spoke : 

“Cowards !” he said. “Cowards !” — a shrivelling rage 
was making his speech thick. “A thousand against one I 
It is I they hate, and they vent their hatred of me 
upon a woman! Such is the chivalry of this puddle 
of water- worms they call London !” 

A sudden admiration swept the girl. “You dare 
them, too ! You are not afraid !” She turned on the 
manager passionately. “I wouldn’t play for them again 
for all London ! I despise you all, in front of the cur- 
tain and behind it. Liars — all liars! Come, Bysshe, 
I will go with you!” 

Shelley held out his hand to Gordon with an open, 
friendly, “Good-by, my lord.” 

Gordon had been looking at him steadily — looking, 
but with a strange irrelevance, seeing really himself. 



AYE, go! ’’ HE FOAMED. “ THE QUICKER THE BETTER!” p, 



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THE CASTAWAY 


137 


standing in his own room at a long-ago dawn, a gob- 
let of brandy in his hand, and in his heart a deter- 
mination rising anew — a wish to be like the youth 
whose clasp now met his own, with a like serenity and 
purpose, a soul to which fame meant least, truth and 
right all ! In that year of dazzle before his marriage 
he had quenched that determination. He had wor- 
shiped the Great Beast. He had lived the world^s life 
and played its games and accepted its awards. How 
he suffered its punishments ! 

Malicious faces were peering in at the street entrance. 
The pit had overflowed into the lobby, the lobby into 
the street, and the numbers swelled from the hordes 
of the pave whose jargon banter flew back and forth. 
The jeering voices came plainly down the brick passage- 
way. 

will see you to your carriage,’^ said Gordon, and 
went out with them. 

They passed to the vehicle — from which Mary Shel- 
ley’s frightened face looked out — ^through a vociferous 
human lane, that groaned and whistled in gusto. 

^^There’s the jade ; an’ ’er lordship with ’er, too !” 

^mich is ’im?” 

^^W’y, ’im with the leg.” 

At the gibe which followed Gordon smiled mirth- 
lessly. This blind rabble, egged on by hatred that uti- 
lized for its ends the crass dislike of the scum for the 
refined — what was it to him ? He knew its masters ! 

As Jane took her seat the jeers redoubled. Across 
the heads between him and the surging entrance of the 
theater he saw the sneering, heavy-lidded face of Wil- 
liam Lamb. The sight roused the truculent demon of 


138 


THE CASTAWAY 


stubbornness in him. With a flare of unrecking im- 
pertinence^, and a racing recollection of a first dinner at 
Melbourne House, when he had given Lady Caroline 
Lamb such a blossom from his coat, Gordon drew the 
carnation from his buttonhole and handed it to Jane 
Clermont. 

The crowd had looked to see him enter with the 
others; now as the vehicle rolled away, leaving him 
standing alone, the clamor, sharpened by his nonchalant 
act and by the smile which they could not translate, 
rose more derisive, more boldly mixed with insult. 
They were overcoming that dull inborn fear of the clod 
for the noble. There was menace in what they said, 
a foreshadowing of peril that might have fallen but for 
a diversion. 

A coach, adroitly handled, whirled up to the kerb- 
stone, and a man leaped to the pavement. Gordon felt 
a hand touch his arm. 

^^The carriage, my lord,’^ said Fletcher. 

The valet, guessing better than his master, had fol- 
lowed him. A sense of the dog-like fidelity of the old 
servitor smote Gordon and softened the bitter smile on 
his lips. Only an instant he hesitated before he entered 
the carriage, and in that instant a hand grasped at the 
horses^ heads, but the coachman’s whip fell and the 
plunging animals made an aisle through which the ve- 
'hicle, hissed and hooted, rolled in safety. 

As it drew away, a young man, dark and oriental 
looking, came through the crowd, staring wonderingly 
at the excitement. He was one who more than once 
on that spot had watched Gordon’s approaching car- 
riage with black envy and jealousy — ^the same who had 


THE CASTAWAY 


139 


stood with Jane Clermont on the night Dr. Cassidy’s 
suspicions gaze had made him draw closer into the 
shadow of the doorway. At the names the crowd 
coupled, he started, paled and hurried into the stage- 
entrance. , 

In an instant he emerged, breathing hard, heard the ^ 
jeers of the crowd directed at the moving carriage, and, 
his fingers clenching, rushed into the street and gazed 
after it. It turned into Long Acre, going toward Picca- 
dilly. He plunged into the network of side streets op- 
posite and hastened rapidly in the direction it had 
taken. 

It was not far to the house on Piccadilly Terrace, and 
he outstripped the coach. From the shadow he saw it 
stop, saw the man it carried dismount — alone. 

^^Where is she?” he muttered. ^^He took her from 
the theater — damn him! Where has he left her?” 

The same bitter smile with which he had faced the 
clamor outside the theater was on Gordon^s white face 
as he entered the house. In the hall he opened a single 
note of invitation, read it and laughed. 

Eushton met him. ^^Mr. Dallas is in the library, 
your lordship.” 

Gordon strode into the room. Dallas saw that though 
he was smiling oddly, his face was deeply lined, and 
his eyes were glittering like those of a man with a fever. 

^^George,” cried Dallas, was bound to see you! 
Why, — ^you are ill!” 

^^Not I, Dallas. I have been to Drury Lane to-night. 
All society was there, divorced and divorceable, in- 
trigants and Babylonians of quality. Lady Holland, 


140 


THE CASTAWAY 


like a hippopotamus in the face, and William Lamb 
with the very manner of the ursine sloth !” 

There was genuine anxiety in Dallas^ tone. ^^Come 
with me to Stratford for a few days/^ he besought. 
^^Come now — ^to-night V’ 

^‘Not this week, old friend. I have social engage- 
ments to fill!” Gordon tossed him the note he held. 
^^See! Lady Jersey, the loveliest tyrant that shakes the 
cap and bells of fashion’s fools! — ^the despot of Al- 
mack’s — the patroness-in-chief of the Dandy Ball, in- 
vites the reprobate, the scapegrace, to that sumptuous 
conclave! She dares the frown and risks pollution! 
Would you have me disappoint my only woman apolo- 
gist in London? Shall I not reward such unparagoned 
courage with the presence of its parlor lion, its ball- 
room bard, its hot-pressed darling?” 

He laughed wildly, sardonically, and jerked the bell. 

^^Fletcher, a bottle of brandy,” he commanded, ^^and 
I shall not want you again to-night.” 

The valet set the bottle down with an anxious look 
at his master — a half -appealing one toward Dallas. 

As the door closed, Gordon, sitting on the table-edge, 
began to sing with perfect coolness, without a quaver 
in the metallic voice: 

“The Devil returned to hell by two, 

And he stayed at home till five; 

He dined on a dowager done ragout 
And a peer boiled down in an Irish stew 
And, quoth he, T’ll take a drive! 

I walked this morning, I’ll ride to-night — ■ 

In darkness my children take delight — 

And I’ll see how my favorites thrive!’” 


THE CASTAWAY 


141 


p' 

^rLaddie!” Dallas’ cry was full of pity and en- 
treaty. ‘T beg of you — stop!” He went over and 
touched the other’s arm. 

‘^Listen, Dallas — 

“The Devil he lit on the London pave 
And he found his work done well. 

For it ran so red from the slandered dead 
That it blushed like the waves of hell! 

Then loudly and wildly and long laughed he — 
‘Me thinks they have here little need of me!’ ” 


CHAPTER XIX 


THE BURI^ING OF AN EFFIGY 

Beau Brummell, pattern of the dandies, stood in Al- 
maek’s Assembly Rooms, bowing right and left with 
the languid elegance of his station. The night before, 
in play at the Argyle, he had lost twenty thousand 
pounds at macao, hut what mattered that to the czar 
of fashion, who had introduced starch into neck-cloths 
and had his top-boots polished with champagne, whose 
very fob-design was a thing of more moment in Brookes’ 
Club than the fall of Bonaparte, and whose loss even of 
the regent’s favor had not been able to affect his reign. 
He was a still fool that ran deep. He had been in 
debt ever since a prince’s whim had given him a cor- 
netcy in the Tenth Hussars; the episode now meant to 
him only another ruined Jew, and a fresh flight for 
his Kashmerian butterfly career. 

He took snuff with nonchalant grace from a buhl 
snuff-box, — ^he had one for each day in the year, — and 
touched his rouged lips with a lace handkerchief of 
royal rose-point. His prestige had never been higher, 
nor his insolence more accurately applied than on this 
evening of the last of the Dandy Balls. 

The club tables, where ordinarily were grouped play- 
( 142 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


143 


ers at whist and hazard, had vanished ; brackets holding 
glass candelabra were distributed along the walls, and 
the pink shaded glow of myriads of wax tapers was re- 
flected from mirrors set crosswise in every angle and 
surrounded by masses of flowers. The great tapestried 
ball-room, — a hundred feet in length, — in which Ma- 
dame Catalan! had given her famous concerts and Kean 
his readings from Shakespeare, was decorated with 
gilt columns, pilasters, and classic medallions with 
candles in cut-glass lusters. A string orchestra played 
behind a screen of palms and a miniature stage had 
been built across the lower end of the room. 

Here were gathered the oligarchs of fashion and the 
tyrants of ton. The dandies — Pierrepont, Alvanley, 
Petersham, the fop lieutenants and poodle-loving wor- 
shipers of Brummell — with gold buckles glittering in 
their starched stocks, and brave in tight German trou- 
sers and jewelled eye-glasses, preened and ogled among 
soberer wearers of greater names and ladies of title, 
whose glistening shoulders and bare arms flashed whitely 
through the shifting stir of bright colors. 

On the broad stair, under the chandeliers of crystal 
and silver, in the ball-room, — ^wherever the groups and 
the gossip moved that evening, one name was on every 
tongue. The series of tableaux rehearsed under direction 
of Lady Heathcote, and the new quadrille introduced 
from Paris by Lady Jersey, the features of the evening, 
were less speculated upon than was George Gordon. 
The hissing at Drury Lane had several new versions, 
and there were more sensational stories afloat. It was 
said he had entered Brookes’ Club the day before, where 
no one had spoken to him; that the Horse Guards had 


144 


THE CASTAWAY 


had to be sent for to prevent his being mobbed in Palace 
Yard as he attempted to enter the House of Lords. It 
was even confidently asserted that a motion was to be 
introduced in Parliament to suspend him from his priv- 
ileges as a peer. 

Lady Jersey, stately in black velvet and creamy lace, 
met John Hobhouse on the stair. 

^^Have you seen him?” she asked anxiously. 

but I have called every day. It was courageous 
of you to send him the invitation for to-night. No 
other patroness would have dared.” 

^‘1 only wish he would come!” she flashed imperi- 
ously. ^^One would think we were a lot of New Eng- 
land witch-hunters ! There is nothing more ridiculous 
than society in one of its seven-year fits of morality. 
Scandals are around us every day, but we pay no heed 
till the spasm of outraged virtue takes us. Then we 
pick out some one by mere caprice, hiss him, cut him — 
make him a whipping-boy to be lashed from our doors. 
When we are satisfied, we give our drastic virtue chloro- 
form and put it to sleep for another seven years !” 

Hobhouse smiled grimly at the gleam in her hazel 
eyes as she passed on to the lower room where the quad- 
rille was to have its final rehearsal. Lady Jersey’s was 
a despotic rule. She was as famous for her diplomacy 
as for her Sunday parties. More than one debate had 
been postponed in Parliament to avoid a conflict with 
one of her dinners. Gordon, he reflected, could have 
no more powerful ally. 

He ascended to the ball-room, where the tableaux 
were oozing patiently on with transient gushes of ap- 


THE CASTAWAY. 


145 


probation: ^^Solomon and the Queen of Sheba/^ with 
Lady Heathcote as the queen; ^Tamerlane the Great,” 
posed by a giant officer of the foot-guards in a suit of 
chain-mail, — and subjects drawn from heathen mythol- 
ogy. 

The last number, a monologue, was unnamed, but 
word had gone forth that the performer was to be Lady 
Caroline Lamb. 

Slowly the curtain was drawn aside and a breath of 
applause stirred as Lady Caroline was revealed, in com- 
plete Greek costume, with short blue skirt and round 
jacket, its bodice cut square and low and its sleeves 
white from elbow to wrist. In that congress of beauties, 
decked in the stilted conventions of Mayfair modistes, 
the attire had a touch of the barbaric which suited its 
wearer’s type — a touch accentuated by the jade beads 
about her throat and the dagger thrust through her 
girdle. 

The fiddles of the orchestra had begun to play, as 
prelude, the music of the Greek love-song Gordon had 
written, long ago made popular in London drawing- 
rooms, and ^^Maid-of - Athens !” was echoed here and 
there from the fioor. 

The figure on the stage swept a slow glance about her, 
her cheeks dark and red from some under-excitement. 
She waved her hand, and from the wings came a pro- 
cession of tiny pages dressed as imps, all in red. 

A murmur of wonder broke from the crowd. Lady 
Caroline’s vagaries were well-known and her wayward 
devisings were never without sensation. 

^"What foolery of Caro’s can this be ?” queried Brum- 


146 


THE CASTAWAY 


mell to Petersham as the first page set up a tripod and 
the second placed upon it a huge metal salver. 

The whole room was rustling, for it was clear, from 
the open surprise of the committee, that this was a 
feature not on the program. Those in the rear even 
stood on chairs while the scarlet-hued imps grouped 
about the tripod in a half-circle open toward the audi- 
ence. 

Lady Caroline clapped her hands and a last page en- 
tered dressed in red and black as Mephistopheles, car- 
rying aloft on a wand what looked like a gigantic doll. 
The wand he fitted into a socket in the salver, and the 
dangling figure that swung from it, turning slowly, re- 
vealed a grotesque image of George Gordon. 

The audience gazed at the effigy with its clever bur- 
lesque of each well-known detail, — ^the open rolling col- 
lar, the short brown curls pasted on the mask, the car- 
nation in its buttonhole — startled at the effrontery of 
the idea. It was Brummell who gave the signal by an 
enthusiastic Brava! 

Then the assemblage broke into applause and laugh- 
ter that ran like a mounting wave across the flash and 
glitter of the ball-room, thundering down the refrain 
of the orchestra. 

The applause stilled as Lady Caroline raised her 
hand, and recited, in a voice that penetrated to the 
furthermost corner: 

*‘Is it Guy Fawkes we bring with his stuffing of straw? 
No, no! For Guy Fawkes paid his debt to the law! 

But the cause we uphold is to decency owed, 

By a social tribunal, unmarked by the code! 


THE CASTAWAY 


147 


Behold here a poet — an eloquent thing 

Which the Drury Lane greenroom applauded its king. 

Who made all the envious dandies despair 

By the cut 6t his cuffs and the curl of his hair.” 

She had spoken this doggerel with elaborate gestures 
toward the absurd manikin, her eyes gleaming at the 
applause that greeted each stanza. Unsheathing the 
dagger at her girdle, she waved it with a look of lan- 
guishing that made new laughter. 

“Who, ’tis said, when a fair Maid-of-Athens he pressed. 
Swore his love on a dagger-scratch made on his breast! 
And when they’d have drowned the poor creature, alack. 
Brought gain to his glory by slitting the sack!” 

John Hobhouse was staring indignantly, unable to 
control his anger. A note of triumph, more trenchant - 
and remorseless than her raillery, grew into Lady Caro- 
line’s tone: 

“His deportment, so evilly mal-h-propos. 

At last sunk him far every circle below. 

Till, besmirched by the mire of his flagrant disgrace. 
The front door of London flew shut in his face. 

So burn, yellow flame, for an idol dethroned! 

Burn, burn for a Gordon, by Muses disowned! 

Burn, burn! while about thee thy imps circle fast. 

And give them their comrade, recovered at last! ” 

At the word ^H^urn,” the speaker seized a candle from 
a sconce and touched it to the figure, which blazed 
brightly up. The imp-pages grasped hands and began 
to run round and round the group. At the weird sight 
a tumult of applause went up from the whole multi- 


148 


THE CASTAWAY 


tilde, which clapped and stamped and bravo'd itself 
hoarse. 

Suddenly a strange thing happened — ^unexpected, 
anomalous, uncanny. The applause hushed as though 
a wet blanket had been thrown over it. Faces forsook 
the stage. The pages ceased their circling. Women 
drew sharp tremulous breaths and men turned eagerly 
in their places to see a man advancing into the assembly 
with halting step and with a face pale yet brilliant, like 
an alabaster vase lighted from within. 

Some subtle magnetism had always hung about 
George Gordon, that had made him the center of any 
crowd. How, in the tension, this was enormously in- 
creased. His sharply chiselled, patrician features 
seemed to thrill and dilate, and his eyes sparkled till 
they could scarce be looked at. A hundred in that room 
he had called by name ; scores he had dined and gamed 
with. His look, ruthless, yet even, seemed to single 
out and hold each one of these speechless and staring, 
deaf to BrummelFs sneer through the quiet. 

Speech came from Gordon’s lips, controlled, yet vital 
with subterraneous passion — words that none of that 
shaken audience could afterward recall save in part — 
hot like lava, writhing, pitiless, falling among them 
like a flaying lash of whip-cords: 

‘^Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! I have heard 
hyenas and jackals in the ruins of Asia, Albanian 
wolves and angry Mussulmans! Theirs is sweet music 
beside the purr of England’s scandal-mongers. I have 
hated your cant, despised your mediocrity and scoffed 
at your convention, and now, lacking the dagger and 
the bowl, — when deliberate desolation is piled upon me. 


THE CASTAWAY 


149 


when I stand alone on my hearth with my household 
gods shivered around me, — ^you gather your pomp and 
rabblement of society to bait me !” 

There was a stir at the door. Lady Jersey had en- 
tered, and John Hobhouse sprang to her side. She saw 
the blazing puppet and divined instantly the cruel 
farce that had been enacted. Her indignation leaped, 
but he caught her arm. 

^‘No, no,^’ he said, ^^it is too late.’^ 

The stinging sentences went on: 

^^So have you dealt with others, those whose names 
will be rung in England when your forgotten clay has 
mixed with its earth! Let them be gently born and 
gently minded as they may — as gentle as Sheridan, 
whom a year ago you toasted. He grew old and you 
covered him with the ignominy of a profligate, aban- 
doned him to friendless poverty and left him to die 
like a wretched beggar, while bailiffs squabbled over 
his corpse! What mattered to him the crocodile tears 
when you laid him yesterday in Westminster Abbey? 
What cared he for your four noble pall-bearers — a duke, 
a pair of earls and a Lord Bishop of London? Did it 
lighten his last misery that you followed him there — 
two royal highnesses, marquises, viscounts, a lord mayor 
and a regiment of right-honorables ? Scribes and Phari- 
sees, hypocrites! 

‘^So you dealt with Shelley — the youth whose songs 
you would not hear! You hounded him, expelled him 
from his university, robbed him of his father and his 
peace, and drove him like a moral leper from among 
you ! You write no pamphlets in verse — nor read them 
if a canon frowns! You sit in your pews on Simday 


150 


THE CASTAWAY 


and thank Fate that you are not as Percy Bysshe Shel- 
ley, the outcast! God! He sits so near that Heaven 
your priests prate of that he hears the seraphs sing! 

^^And do you think now to break me on your paltry 
wheel? You made me, without my search, a species of 
pagod. In the caprice of your pleasure, you throw down 
the idol from its pedestal. But it is not shattered; 
I have neither loved nor feared you! Henceforth I 
will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with 
you. Attribute to me every phase of your vileness! 
Charge me with profligacy and madness ! Make of my 
career only a washed fragment in the hartshorn of your 
dislike ! Drive your red-hot plowshares, but they shall 
not De for me ! May my bones never rest in an English 
grave, nor my body feed its worms !” 

The livid sentences fell quivering, heavy with virile 
emphasis, like the deflance of some scorned augur, in- 
voking the Furies in the midnight of Eome. 

Hardly a breath or movement had come from those 
who heard. They seemed struck with stupor at the 
spectacle of this flery drama of feeling. Lady Caroline 
was still standing, the center of the group of imp-pages, 
and above her hovered a slate-colored cloud, the smoke 
from the effigy crumbling into shapeless ashes. Her 
gaze was on the speaker ; her teeth clenched ; the mock- 
ery of her face merged into something apprehensive 
and terror-smitten. 

In the same strained silence, looking neither to right 
nor left, Gordon passed to the entrance. Hobhouse 
met him half-way and turned with him to Lady Jersey. 
Gordon bent and kissed her hand, and as he went slowly 
down the stair. Lady Jersey’s eyes filled with tears. 


THE CASTAWAY 


151 


The spell was broken by a cry from the stage and 
Lady Heathcote’s scream. Lady Caroline had swayed 
and fallen. The blade of the dagger which she still 
held had slipped against her breast as she fell, and blood 
followed the slight cut. The crowd surged forward in 
excitement and relaxation, while waves of lively orches- 
tral music rolled over the confusion, through which 
the crumpled figure was carried to a dressing-room. 

Only those near by saw the dagger cut, but almost 
before Gordon had emerged into the night a strange 
rumor was running through the assembly. It grew 
in volume through the after-quadrille and reached the 
street. 

^^Caroline Lamb has tried to stab herself/^ the whisper 
said. 




CHAPTEE XX 


THE EXILE 

Fletcher was watching anxiously for his master’s 
return that night. When he entered, there were new 
lines in his face — ^the stigmata of some abrupt and fear- 
ful mental recoil. 

^^Order the coach to be got ready at once/’ Gordon 
directed, ^^and pack my portmanteau.” 

He went heavily into the library, gazing at the book- 
shelves with eyes listless and dull. Presently, with the 
same nerveless movements, he unlocked a drawer and 
took therefrom several small articles: a lock of Ada’s 
hair — a little copy of ^^Eomeo and Juliet” given him 
years before by his sister — and the black bottle. He 
thrust these into his great-coat pocket. 

Amid the litter of papers on his desk a document 
met his eye : it was the draft of separation submitted by 
Sir Samuel Eomilly. Through his mind flitted vaguely 
his struggle as he had sat with that paper before him. 
The struggle was ended; justice was impossible. It 
remained only to sign this, the death-warrant of his 
fatherhood. He wrote his name without a tremor, 
franked it for the post and laid it in plain view, as 
Fletcher entered to announce the carriage. 

( 152 ) 


•ivi 


THE CASTAWAY 


153 


The deep lines were deeper on Gordon’s face as he 
went to the pavement; he moved like a sleep-walker, 
his body obeying mechanically the mandate of some 
hidden, alert purpose working independently of eye and 
brain. An inner voice rather than his own seemed to 
give the direction — a direction that made the coach- 
man stare, made Fletcher with a look of dismay seize 
coat and hat and climb hurriedly to the box beside him. 

Gordon did not see this — ^he saw nothing, knew noth- 
ing, save the rush of the coach through the gloom. 

When the worn night was breaking into purple fringes 
of dawn, Gordon stood on the deck of a packet out- 
bound for Ostend, looking back over the wine-dark 
water where the dissolving fog, hung like a fume of 
silver-gray against the white Dover cliffs, built a glit- 
tering city of towers and banners. Under the first 
beams the capricious vapors seemed the ghosts of dead 
ideals shrouding a harbor of hate. His youth, his 
dreams, his triumphs, his bitterness, his rebellion, his 
grief, all blended, lay there smarting, irreparable. Be- 
fore him stretched wanderings and regrets and broken 
longings. 

^^Your coffee, my lord!” — a familiar voice spoke. 
Fletcher stood behind him, tray in hand, trepidation 
and resolve struggling in his countenance. 

Gordon took the coffee mechanically. ^‘How did you 
come here?” 

^‘With the coach, my lord.” 

^^Where are you going?” 

The valet’s hand shook, and he swallowed hard. 
^^Your lordship knows best,” he said huskily. 


154 


THE CASTAWAY 


Gordon gazed a moment out across the misty channel. 
When he set down the cup his face had a look that 
brought to the other^s eyes a sudden gladness and utter 
devotion. 

^^Thank you, Fletcher,^^ he said gently, and turned 
his gaze away. 

Presently, as the light quickened, he drew paper 
from his pocket, put the copy of “Romeo and JulieP’ 
beneath it for support, and with the book resting on the 
rail, began to write. What he wrote — strange that 
chance should have furnished for his tablet now a story 
of such deathless love! — was a letter to Annabel: 


*‘A few final words — not many. Answer I do not expect, 
nor does it import. But you will at least hear me. I leave 
in England but one being whom: you have left me to part 
with — my sister. Wherever I may go — and I may go far — 
you and I can never meet in this world. Let this fact 
content or atone, and if accident occurs to me, he kind to 
her; or if she is then also nothing, to her children. For 
never has she acted or spoken toward you but as your 
friend. You once promised me this much. Do not deem 
the promise cancelled — for it was not a vow. 

“Whatever I may have felt, I assure you that at this 
moment I bear you no resentment. If you have injured 
me, this forgiveness is something; if I have injured you, 
it is something more still. Remember that our feelings 
will have one rallying point so long as our child lives. 
Teach Ada not to hate me. I do not ask for justification 
to her — this is probably beyond the power of either of us 
to give — but let her not grow up believing I am a deserv- 
ing outcast from my kind, or lying dead in some forgotten 
grave. For the one would sadden her young mind no less 
than the other. Let her one day read what I have writ- 
ten, and so judge me. And recollect that though now it 


THE CASTAWAY 


155 


may be an advantage to you, yet it may sometime come 
to be a sorrow to her to have the waters or the earth be- 
tween hei" and her father. 

“Whether the offense that has parted us has been solely 
on my side or reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased 
now to reflect upon any but two things — that you are the 
mother of my child, and that we shall never meet again.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


GOBDOlSr SWIMS FOR A LIFE 

From London to Ostend, and through Flanders, a 
swart shadow trailed George Gordon slowly but un- 
erringly. It was the man whose dark, reckless face had 
once turned with jealous passion to Jane Clermont as 
they had watched a carriage approaching Drury Lane; 
he who, on a later night, had pursued the same vehicle, 
then a mark for jeers, to Piccadilly Terrace. The ques- 
tion he had uttered as he saw Gordon alight alone, had 
rung in his brain through his after-search: ^^Where 
has he left her ?” The London newspapers had not been 
long in chronicling Gordon^s arrival in Ostend, and 
thither he followed, making certain that in finding one 
he should find the other. 

The chase at first was not difficult. Evil report, car- 
ried with malicious assiduity by spying tourists and 
globe-trotting gossip-mongers, had soon overtaken his 
quarry, and Gordon’s progress became marked by calum- 
nious tales which hovered like obscene sea-birds over the 
wake of a vessel. Gordon had gone from Brussels in a 
huge coach, copied from one of Napoleon’s taken at 
Genappe, and purchased from a travelling Wallachian 
nobleman. The vehicle was a noteworthy object, and 
( 156 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


157 


early formed the basis of lying reports. A paragraph in 
the Journal de Belgique met the pursuer’s eye on his 
first arrival in Ostend. 

It stated with detail that a Flemish coachmaker had 
delivered to the milor Anglais a coach of the value of 
two thousand eight hundred francs; that on going for 
payment, he found his lordship had absconded with the 
carriage; that the defrauded sellier had petitioned the 
Tribunal de Premiere Instance for proper representa- 
tion to other districts, that the fugitive might be ap- 
prehended and the stolen property seized. With this 
clipping in his pocket the man who tracked Gordon fol- 
lowed up the Khine to the confines of Switzerland. 
Here he lost a month, for the emblazoned wagon de 
luxe had turned at Basle, and, skirting Neufchatel, had 
taken its course to Lake Geneva. 

Gordon had travelled wholly at random and paused 
there only because the shimmering blue waters, the 
black mountain ridges with their epaulets of cloud and, 
in the distance, the cold, secular phantom of Mont 
Blanc, brought to his jaded senses the first hint of relief. 
In the Villa Diodati, high above the lake, the English 
milord with the lame foot, the white face and sparkling 
eyes, stayed his course, to the wonder of the country 
folk who speculated endlessly upon the strange choice 
which preferred the gloomy villa to the spires and slate 
roofs of the gay city so near. And here, to his surprise, 
Gordon found ensconced, in a cottage on the high bank, 
Shelley and his young wife, with the black-eyed, creole- 
tinted girl whom the Drury Lane audience had hissed. 

So had chance conspired to color circumstance for 
the rage of tireless hatred that was following. 


158 


THE CASTAWAY 


The blows that had succeeded the flight of Annabel 
with his child had left Gordon stunned. The flaming 
recoil of his feeling, in that fierce denunciation at Al- 
mack^s, had burned up in him the very capacity for 
further suffering, and for a time the quiet of Diodati, 
set in its grove above the water like a bird’s nest among 
leaves, was a healing anod3me. 

Erom his balcony Mont Blanc and its snowy aiguilles 
were screened, but the sun sank roseate behind the Jura, 
and it lifted again over vineyarded hills which echoed 
the songs of vine-dressers and the mellow bells of saun- 
tering herds. Below, boats swept idly in the sun, or the 
long lances of the rain marched and marshalled across 
the level lake to the meeting and sundering of the 
clouds. 

There came a time too soon, when the dulled nerves 
awoke, when the whole man cried out. In the sharpest 
of these moods Gordon found respite at the adjacent 
cottage, where Shelley, whose bright eyes seemed to 
drink light from the pages of Plato or Calderon, read 
aloud, or Jane Clermont, piquant and daring as of old, 
sang for them some song of Tom Moore’s. Or in the 
long days the two men walked and sailed, under a sky 
jof garter-blue, feeling the lapping of the waves, living 
^between the two wondrous worlds of water and ether, 
till for a time Gordon laid the troubled specters of his 
thoughts in semi-forgetfulness. 

One day they drove along the margin of the lake to 
Chillon and spent a night beneath the frowning 
chateau walls that had entombed Bonnivard. On the 
afternoon of their return, sitting alone on the balcony 
with the gloom of those dungeons still upon him, gazing 


THE CASTAWAY 


169 


far across the lake, across the mountains, toward that 
home from which he had been driven, Gordon, for the 
first time since he had left England, found relief in 
composition. He wrote of Chillon’s prisoner, but the 
agony in the lines was a personal one ; 

“I made a footing in the wall, 

It was not therefrom to escape. 

For I had buried one and all 
Who loved me in a human shape; 

No child — no sire — no kin had I, 

No partner in my misery; 

But I was curious to ascend 
To my barred windows, and to bend 
Once more, upon the mountains high. 

The quiet of a loving eye.” 

He wrote in the dimming luster of a perfect day. 
Below him rippled the long lake churning an inarticu- 
late melody, and a tiny island with trees upon it rested 
the eye. As he gazed, beyond the dazzling beryl foliage, 
set in the sunset, a spot rivetted his look. A moment 
before the white sail of a boat had glanced there ; now a 
confused flat blur lay on the water. 

Gordon thrust his commonplace-book into his pocket 
and leaned forward, shading his eyes from the glow. 
The blot resolved itself into a capsized hull and two 
black figures struggling in the water, one with difficulty 
supporting the other. 

The next moment he was dashing down the bank, 
hallooing for Fletcher, peeling off coat and waistcoat as 
he went. 

^There’s a boat swamped,” he shouted, as the valet 
came through the garden. ‘^Where is the skiff ?” 


160 


THE CASTAWAY 


^TVIiss Clermont has it, my lord/’ 

Gordon plunged in, while Fletcher jan to summon 
the Shelleys. They came hurrying along the vineyard 
lane with frightened faces, Mary to watch from the high 
bank, and Shelley, who could no more swim than 
Fletcher, to stride up and down, his long hair streaming 
in the wind. The excitement brought a picturesque 
dozen of goitred vine-dressers from the hillside, who 
looked on with exclamations. 

All were gazing fixedly on the lake, or they might 
have seen two men enter the grounds from the upper 
road. Of these, one was a Swiss with a severe, thin face 
and ascetic brow, the syndic of Cologny, the nearest 
town — a bigot functionary heartily disliked by the coun- 
try people. The other was a Genevan attorney. From 
the road they had not seen the catastrophe, and the 
overturned boat, the struggling figures, and the swim- 
mer forging to the rescue came to their view all at once. 

Gordon was swimming as he had never done save once 
— when he had swum the Hellespont years before, and 
in mid-channel a strange, great piebald fish had glided 
near him. The lawyer saw him reach and grasp the 
helpless man, and, supporting him, bring him to shore. 
He sniffed with satisfaction. 

^^Only one man in the canton can swim like that,” he 
said, ^^and that’s the one you came to see. No wonder 
the peasants call him The English fish’ !” 

The young man whom Gordon had aided wore a 
blonde curling beard, contrasting strongly with his older 
companion’s darker shaven cheeks and bushy black 
Greek eyebrows. The unseen spectators on the terrace 
saw him drink from his rescuer’s pocket-flask — saw him 


THE CASTAWAY 


161 


rise and grasp the other^s hand and knew that he was 
thanking him. As they watched, a servant ran to the 
coach-honse, and the syndic observed : 

‘^He’s sending them into town by carriage. They’re 
going indoors now. We’ll go down presently.” 

‘‘Take my advice,” nrged the attorney above the ter- 
race, “and let the Englishman alone. Haven’t we court 
business enough in Switzerland, that we must work for 
Flanders ? What have we to do with the complaints of 
Brussels coachmakers ? And how do you know it’s true, 
anyway ?” 

The syndic’s lips snapped together. 

“I know my business,” he bridled. “He is a wor- 
shiper of Satan and a scoffer at religion.” 

“And you’d burn him with green wood if you could, 
as Calvin did Servetus in the town yonder, eh ?” 

“He has committed every crime in his own country,” 
went on the other angrily. “He has formed a conspir- 
acy to overthrow by rhyme all morals and government. 
My brother wrote me from Coppet that one of Madame 
de Stael’s guests fainted at seeing him ride past, as if 
she had seen the devil. They say in Geneva that he has 
corrupted every grisette on the rue Basse! Do you 
think he is too good to be a thief? Murderer or ab- 
sconder or heretic, it is all one to me. Cologny wants 
none such on her skirts. Let us go down,” he added, 
rising ; “it will be dark soon.” 

The counsellor shrugged his shoulders and followed 
the other over the sloping terrace. 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE FACE OIT THE IVORY 

When Gordon descended the stair he came npon a 
striking group at the villa entrance. Shelley, with his 
wife beside him, confronted the severe-faced syndic, who 
stood stolidly with the comfortably plump avocat. A 
look of indignation was on his brow, and Mary’s face 
was perturbed. 

^^Here he is,” said the functionary in his neighbor- 
hood patois, and with satisfaction. 

‘‘Yoxl have business with me ?” asked Gordon. 

have. I require you to accompany me at once to 
Cologny on a matter touching the peace of this canton.” 

^^And this matter is what ?” 

^^You speak French,” returned the syndic tartly; 
^^doubtless you read it as well,” — and handed him a clip- 
ping from the J ournal de Belgique. 

Gordon scanned the fragment of paper, first with sur- 
prise, then with a slow and bitter smile. He had not 
seen the story, but it differed little from scores of cal- 
umnies that had filled the columns of less credulous 
newspapers in London before his departure. It was a 
breath fresh from the old sulphur bed of hatred, brought 
sharply to him here in his solitude. 

( 162 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


163 


see/’ lie said; ^^this states that a certain English 
milord had turned highwayman and deprived an honest 
Eleming of a wagon ? How does it affect me ?” 

^^Do yon deny that you have the wagon?” demanded 
the S3rndic curtly. 

''The wagon ? I have a wagon, yes. One bought for 
me by my servant.” 

Hn Brussels?” 

^^As it happens, in Brussels.” The paleness of Gor- 
don’» face was accentuated now, and his eyes held cores 
of dangerous flame. ^^And because I am an English 
milord, and bring a wagon from Brussels, you assume 
that I am a robber?” 

^TTou were driven from your own country,” menaced 
the other. ^^Do you think we hear nothing, we Swiss? 
This canton knows you well enough ! Stop those 
horses!” he snarled, for the great coach, ready for its 
trip to the town, was rolling down the driveway. The 
syndic sprang to the horses’ heads. 

At the same instant the two strangers who had been 
in the overturned boat, now with clothing partially 
dried, came from the house. 

^^There !” The syndic pointed to the ornate vehicle. 
^^Do you deny this is the wagon described in that news- 
paper, and that you absconded with it from Brussels ?” 

The older of the two strangers turned quick eyes on 
Gordon, then on the wagon. Before Gordon could re- 
ply, he spoke in nervous French : 

beg pardon. I was the owner of that conveyance, 
and the one who sold it.” 

^^Maybe,” said the functionary, ^fl)ut you did not sell it 
to this person, I have reason to believe.” 


164 


THE CASTAWAY 


yonder is the purchaser.’^ He pointed to a pro- 
saic figure at the steps. 

^^His valet Shelley thrust in explosively. 

told you so/’ grunted the man of law, and stared 
with the surprise of recognition, as the syndic, ruffling 
with anger, turned on the strangers with sarcasm: 
'^^Friends of the English milord, no doubt!” 

The counsellor laid a hasty hand on his sleeve : 

^^Stop!” he said. think I have had the honor of 
meeting these gentlemen in Geneva. Allow me to pre- 
sent you, monsieur, to Prince Mavrocordato, minister 
of foreign affairs of Wallachia, and” — ^he turned to the 
latter’s younger companion — ^fflis secretary. Count Pie- 
tro Gamba, of Eavenna.” 

The sour-faced official drew hack. These were names 
whose owners had been public guests of the canton. 
This Englishman, evil and outcast as he might be, he 
had no legal hold upon. He could scarcely frame a 
grudging apology, for the resentment of self-righteous- 
ness that was on his tongue, and stalked off up the ter- 
race in sullen chagrin not consoled by the chuckles of 
the attorney beside him. 

Gordon saw them go, his hands trembling. He re- 
plied mechanically to the grateful farewells of the two 
, strangers as they entered the coach, and watched it roll 
swiftly down the darkening shore road, a quivering blur 
before his eyes. A fierce struggle was within him, the 
peace which the tranquil poise of Shelley’s creed had 
lent him, warring against a clamant rage. 

Hot only in England was he maligned. Here, on the 
edge of this mountain barrier, defamation had followed 
him. The pair riding in his own carriage knew who 


THE CASTAWAY 


165 


he was ; the older had spoken his name and title. And 
they had not elected to stay beyond necessity. Yet for 
their momentary presence, indeed, he should be grate- 
ful. But for this trick of coincidence he should now 
be haled before a bungling Genevan tribunal, his name 
and person a mark for the sparring of pettifogging 
Swiss officials ! 

These thoughts were clashing through his mind as 
he turned and walked slowly down to the bank where 
Shelley’s Swiss servant had moored the stranger’s res- 
cued boat, bailed out and with sail stretched to dry. The 
sunset, as he stood, flamed redly across the lake, its ray 
glinting from the rim of a bright object whose broken 
chain had caught beneath the boat’s gunwale. He 
leaned and drew it out. 

It was an oval miniature backed with silver — the por- 
trait of a young girl, a face frail and delicately hued, 
with fine line of chin and slender neck, with wistful 
eyes the deep color of the Adriatic, hair a gush of 
tawny gold, skin like warm Arum lilies, and a string 
of pearls about her neck. Evidently it had belonged to 
one of the two men with whom the craft had capsized. 
It was too late now to overtake the coach; he would 
send it after them that evening. 

He turned the miniature over. On the back was en- 
graved a name: ^Teresa Gamba.” Gamba? It had 
been one of the names spoken by the attorney, that of 
the young count for whose rescue he had swum so hard. 

He looked again at the ivory. His wife? Ho, no; 
innocence of life, ignorance of its passions and parades 
were there. His sister? Yes. The fair hair and blue 
eyes were alike. And now he caught a subtle resem- 


166 


THE CASTAWAY 


blance of feature. She was dear to this brother^ no 
doubt — dear as was his own half-sister to him, well-nigh 
the only being left in England who believed in him and 
loved him. 

He looked up at a hail from the lake. A boat was ap- 
proaching, bearing a single feminine rower. As he 
gazed, she looked over her shoulder to wave something 
white at the porch. 

“It is Jane. She has been to the posV^ cried Shelley 
from the terrace, and hastened down the bank. 

Gordon thrust the ivory into his pocket as the skiff 
darted in to the landing. 


CHAPTEE XXIII 

THE devil’s deal 

As he took the two missives the girl handed him 
Gordon caught his breath, for one he saw was directed 
in Annabel’s hand. For a moment a hope that over- 
leaped all his suffering rose in his brain. Had those 
months wrought a change in her ? Had she, too, thought 
of their child? Had the cry he voiced on the packet 
that bore him from England struck an answering chord 
in her? He opened its cover. An inclosure dropped 
out. 

He picked it up blankly. It was the note he had 
pencilled on the channel, returned unopened. 

The sudden revulsion chilled him. He broke the seal 
of the second letter and read — read while a look of utter 
sick whiteness crept across his face, a look of rage and 
suffering that marked every feature. 

It was from his sister, a letter written with fingers 
that soiled and creased it in their agony, blotted and 
stained with tears. For the thing it told of was a 
dreadful thing, a whispered charge against him so 
damning, so satanic in its cruelty, that though lip 
might murmur it to a gloating ear, yet pen refused to 
word it. The whole world turned black before him, and 
( 167 ) 


168 


THE CASTAWAY 


the dusk seemed shot through with barbed and flaming 
javelins of agony. 

He crushed the letter in his hand, and, with a gesture 
like a madman^s, thrust it into Shelley’s, turning to him 
a countenance distorted with passion, gauche, malig- 
nant, repulsive. 

^^Eead it, Shelley,” he said in a strangled voice. 
^^Eead it and know London, the most ineffable centaur 
ever begotten of hypocrisy and a nightmare ! Eead what 
its wretched lepers are saying! There is a place in 
Michael Angelo’s ^Last Judgment’ in the Sistine Chapel 
that was made for their kind, and may the like await 
them in that of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ — 
Amen 1” 

With this fearful imprecation he flung away from 
their startled faces along the winding vineyarded lane, 
on into the dusk, lost to a sense of direction, to every- 
thing save the blackness in his own soul. 

The night fell, odorous with grape-scents, and the 
moon stained the terraces to amber. It shone on Gor- 
don as he sat by the little wharf where the skiff rocked 
in the ripples, his eyes viewless, looking straight before 
him across the lake. 

For him there was no sanctuary in time or in dis- 
tance. The passage he had read at Hewstead Abbey in 
his mother’s open Bible, beside her body, flashed through 
his mind : And among these nations shalt thou find no 
ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest, . . . 

In the morning thou shalt say. Would God it were even! 
and at even thou shalt say. Would God it were morning! 
He had found — should find — ^no ease nor rest! The 
captive of Chillon had been bound only with fetters of 


THE CASTAWAY 


169 


iron to stone pillars. He was chained with fiery links 
of hate to the freezing walls of the world^s contumely! 

Footsteps went by along the shadowy lane. Shelley^s 
voice spoke: ^^He will come back soon, and we must 
comfort him if we can.^^ 

The words came distinctly as the footsteps died away. 

Something clutched tangibly at Gordon’s soul. In 
that instant his gaze, lifted, rested on a white square in 
the moonlight. It was a familiar enough object, but 
now it appeared odd and outrL He rose and approached 
it. It had been a sign-post bearing an arrow and the 
words “Villa Diodati.” Now malice had painted out 
the name and replaced it with new and staring char- 
acters. 

“Atheist and Fool.” It glared level at him with 
a baleful malevolence that chilled the moment’s warmer 
softening into ice. Atheist! Without God. What 
need, then, had he for man? Let the moralists have it 
so, since they stickled so lustily for endless brimstone. 
Fool ? He would he so, then ! His brain should lie fal- 
low and untilled — he would write no more ! 

With a quick gesture he drew from his pocket his 
commonplace-book. He laid it against the disfigured 
sign-board, pencilled a few words on its cover and, 
turning, hurled it far from him into the shrubbery. 

A twig snapped. He looked around. J ane Clermont 
stood near him, her eyes smiling into his, fringed with 
intoxication and daring. 

“I know,” she said; “they are hounding you still. 
They hated me, too!” She came quite close to him. 
“What need we care ? Wliat are they all to us ?” 

It was the Jane of the Drury Lane greenroom he saw 


170 


THE CASTAWAY 


now — ^the Jane whose brilliance and wit had held him 
then; but there was something deeper in her look that 
he had never seen before : a recklessness, an invitation 
and an assent. 

^‘Jane!” he exclaimed. 

She touched his hand, should we stay here? 

Let us go away from them all — where they cannot fol- 
low us to sting 

Gordon stared at her, his eyes holding hers. To go 
away — ^with her? To slip the leash of all that was pa- 
gan in him? What matter? He was damned anyway — 
a social Pariah; why strive to undeserve the reputation? 
His thought was swirling through savage undercurrents 
of vindictive wrath, circling, circling like a Maelstrom, 
about this one dead center: Civilization had cast him 
off. Henceforth his life was his own, to live to himself, 
for his own ends, as the savage, as the beast of the field. 
To live and to die, knowing that no greater agony than 
was meted to him now could await him, even in that 
nethermost reach where the lost are driven at the end. 

^^e must comfort him if we can The words Shel- 
ley had spoken seemed to vibrate in the stillness like the 
caught key of an organ. He turned to where Villa 
Diodati above them slept in the long arms of the night 
shadows, listening to the contending voices within him. 
Comfort? The placid comfort of philosophy for him 
whose fiesh was fever and his blood quicksilver? In 
this girl life and action beckoned to him — life full and 
abundant — forgetfulness, wandering, and pleasure, fleet- 
ing surely, but still his while it should last ! And yet — 

The girl’s hand was on the skiff. On a sudden a cry 
of fear burst from her lips and she shrank back as a 


THE CASTAWAY 


171 


disordered figure broke from the darkness and clutched 
Gordon’s arm fiercely. 

^^Where are you taking her now ?” 

Gordon’s thought veered. In his numbness of feeling 
there scarce seemed strangeness in the apparition. As 
he looked at the oriental, mustachioed face, haggard and 
haunted, his lips rather than his mind replied: 

^‘Who knows?” 

^TTou lie ! You ruined her career and stole her away 
from London and from me ! Now you want to take her 
from these last friends of hers — for yourself ! But you 
can not go where I will not find you ! And where you 
go the world shall know you and despise you !” 

Jane’s eyes flashed upon the speaker. ^^You!” she 
cried in contemptuous anger. ^^You hated him even in 
London; now you have followed him here. It is you 
who have set the peasants to spy upon us ! It is you who 
have spread tales through Geneva ! You whose lies sent 
the syndic to-day !” 

Gordon had been staring at the Moorish, theatric 
face with a gaze of singular inquiry, his brain search- 
ing, searching for a lost clue. All at once the haze light- 
ened. His thought leaped across a chasm of time. He 
saw a reckless youth, a deserter from the navy, whom 
he had befriended in Greece — a youth who had vanished 
suddenly from Missolonghi during the feast of Eama- 
zan. He saw a shambling, cactus-bordered road to the 
seashore — a file of Turkish soldiers, the foremost in a 
purple coat, and carrying a long wand — a beast of bur- 
den bearing a brown sack — 

^^Trevanion !” he said, ^^revanion — ^by the Lord !” 

He burst into a laugh, reechoing, sardonic, a laugh 


172 


THE CASTAWAY 


now of absolute, remorseless unconcern, of crude reck- 
lessness flaunting at last supreme over crumbled resolve 
— ^the laugh of a zealot flagellant beneath the lash, a 
derisive Yillon on the scaffold. 

^^So I stole her from you! You, even you, dare to 
accuse me. Out of my sight he said, and flung him 
roughly from the path. 

Gordon held out his hand to Jane Clermont, lifted 
her into the skiff, and springing in, sent the slim cockle- 
shell shooting out into the still expanse like an arrow 
on the air. 

Then he took up the oars and turned its prow down 
the lake to where the streaming lights of the careless 
city wavered tnrough the mists, pale green under the 
moonbeams. 

The journal which Gordon had hurled from him lay 
in the vine-rows next morning when Shelley, with a face 
of trouble and foreboding, passed along the dewy lane. 
He read the words written on its cover : 

‘^And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to 
dusty death. I will keep no record of that same hester- 
nal torch-light; and to prevent me from returning, like 
a dog, to the vomit of memory, I throw away this vol- 
ume, and write in Ipecacuanha: Hang up justice! Let 
morality go beg ! To be sure, I have long despised my- 
self and man, but I never spat in the face of my species 
before — ‘0 fool ! I shall go mad !’ 


CHAPTEE XXIV 


THE MARK OF THE BEAST 

^TTour coffee, my lord?’^ 

It was Fletcher^s usual inquiry, repeated night and 
morning — ^the same words that on the Ostend packet 
had told his master that his wanderings were shared. 
After these many months in Venice, where George Gor- 
don had shut upon his retreat the floodgates of the world, 
the old servant's tone had the same wistful cadence of 
solicitude. 

Time for Gordon had passed like wreckage running 
with the tide. The few fevered weeks of wandering 
through Switzerland with Jane Clermont — ^he scarcely 
knew where or how they had ended — ^had left in his 
mind only a series of phantom impressions: woods of 
withered pine, Alpine glaciers shining like truth. Wen- 
gen torrents like tails of white horses and distant thun- 
der of avalanches, as if God were pelting the devil down 
from Heaven with snowballs. And neither the piping of 
the shepherd, nor the rumble of the storm ; not the tor- 
rent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest or the cloud, 
had lightened the darkness of his heart or enabled him 
to lose his wretched identity in the Power and the Glory 
above and beneath him. 


( 173 ) 


174 


THE CASTAWAY 


In that night at Geneva the tidal wave of execration 
which had rolled over his emerging manhood had left 
as it ebbed only a bare reef across which blew cool, in- 
furiate winds of avid recklessness; and through these 
insensate blasts he moved in a kind of waking somnam- 
bulism, in which his acts seemed to him those of another 
individual, and he, the real actor, poised aloft, watching 
with a sardonic speculation. 

At Eome his numbed senses awakened, and he found 
himself alone, and around him his human kind which he 
hated, spying tourists and scribblers, who sharpened 
their scavenger pencils to record his vagaries. He fled 
from them to Venice, where, thanks to report, Fletcher 
had found his master. 

But it was a changed Gordon who had ensconced him- 
self here, a Gordon to whom social convention had be- 
come a sneer, and the praise or blame of his fellows idle 
chaff cast in the wind. He ate and drank and slept — 
not as other men, but as a gormand and debauche. 
Such letters as he wrote — ^to his sister, to Tom Moore, 
to Hobhouse — ^were flippant mockeries. Earely was he 
seen at opera, at ridotto, at conversazione. When he 
went abroad it was most often by night, as though he 
shunned the daylight. More than one cabaret in the 
shadow of the Palace of the Doges knew the white 
satiric face that stared out from its terrace over the 
waterways, where covered gondolas crept like black 
spiders, till the clock of St. Mark’s struck the third 
hour of the morning. And more than one black and 
red-sashed boatman whispered tales of the Palazzo 
Mocenigo on the Grand Canal and the ^^Giovannotto 
Inglese who spent great sums.” 


THE CASTAWAY 


175 


The gondolieri turned their heads to gaze as they 
sculled past the carved gateway. Did not the priests call 
him "the wicked milord^^? And did not all Venice know 
of Marianna, the linen-draper’s wife of the street 
Spezieria, and of Margarita Cogni, the black-eyed 
Fornarina, who came and went as she pleased in 
the milord’s household? They themselves had gained 
many a coin by telling these tales to the tourists from 
the milord’s own country, who came to watch from 
across the canal with opera-glasses, as if he were a rav- 
enous beast or a raree-show; who lay in wait at night- 
fall to see his gondola pass to the wide outlying lagoon,, 
haunted the sand-spit of the Lidoi where he rode horse- 
back, and offered bribes to his servants to see the bed 
wherein he slept. They took the tourists’ soldi shame- 
facedly, however, for they knew other tales, too: how 
he had furnished money to send Beppo, the son of the 
fruit peddler, to the art school at Naples; how he had 
given fifty louis d'or to rebuild the burned shop of the 
printer of San Samuele. 

"Your coffee, my lord?” Fletcher repeated the in- 
quiry, for his master had not heard. 

"No; bring some cognac, Fletcher.” 

The valet obeyed, though with covert concern. He 
had seen the inroads that year had made ; they showed in ^ 
the lines on the pallid face, in the brown hair now just 
flecked with gray, in the increasing fire in the deep 
eyes. The brandy sat habitually at his master’s elbow 
in these days. 

It was two hours past midnight, for to Gordon day 
and night were one, and sleep only a neutral inertness, 
worse with its dreams than the garish day he dreaded. 


176 


THE CASTAWAY 


On the hearth a fire blazed, whose flame bred crimson 
marionettes that danced over the noble carved ceiling 
panels, the tall Venetian mirrors supported by gilt lions, 
the faded furnishings and the mildew-marked canvases 
whose portraits looked stonily from the walls. 

A gust of voices and the sound of virginals, flung up 
from the canal, came faintly through the closed case- 
ment. He moved his shoulders wearily. Yesterday had 
been Christmas Day. To-night was the eve of St. 
Stephen, the opening of the carnival season, with every 
corner osteria a symphony of fiddles, when Venice went 
mad in all her seventy islands. What were holidays, 
what was Christmas to him? 

Even in the warm blaze Gordon shivered. Ghosts 
had troubled him this day. Ghosts that stalked through 
the confused mist and rose before him in the throngs 
that passed and repassed before his mind’s eye. Ghosts 
whose diverse countenances resolved themselves, like 
phantasmagoria, into a single one — ^the pained eager 
face of Shelley. The recurring sensation had brought 
a sick sense of awakening, as of something buried that 
stirred in its submerged chrysalis, protesting against the 
silt settling upon it. 

But brandy had lost its power to lay those ghosts. 
He went to the desk which held the black phial, the tiny 
glass comforter to which he resorted more and more 
often. Once with its surcease it had brought a splendor 
and plenitude of power ; of late its relief had been lent at 
the price of distorted visions. As he drew out the thin- 
walled drawer, its worm-eaten bottom collapsed and its 
jumble of contents poured down on the mahogany. 

He paused, his hand outstretched. Atop of the 


THE CASTAWAY 


177 


melange lay a silver-set miniature. He picked it up, 
holding it nearer the light. A girl’s face, hued like a hy- 
acinth, looked ont of his palm, painted on ivory. A 
string of pearls was about her neck. 

Eor an instant he regarded the miniature fixedly, his 
recollection travelling far. The pearls aided. It was the 
one he had found in the capsized boat at Villa Diodati ! 
He had purposed sending it after the two strangers. The 
events of that wild night had effaced the incident from 
his mind, as a wet sponge wipes off a slate. Fletcher, 
finding the oval long ago in a pocket lining, had put it 
in the desk drawer for safe-keeping, where until this 
moment it had not met his master’s eye. 

^^Teresa.” Gordon suddenly remembered the name 
perfectly. With the memory mixed a sardonic reflection : 
the man who had lost the miniature that day in Switzer- 
land had hastened away with clothing scarce dried. 
Well, if that brother had deemed himself too good to 
linger with the outcast, the balance had been squared. 
The sister, perforce, had made a longer stay ! 

He put down the miniature, found the phial of lauda- 
num and uncorked it, but the face drew him back. It 
was not the external similitude now, but something 
beneath, unobserved the day he had found it — ^the pure 
sensibility, shining unsullied through the transparent 
media. A delicate convent slip, she seemed, not yet 
transplanted to the unsifted soil of the world! A 
strange portrait for him to gaze upon here in this 
palace of ribaldry — him, the moral Caliban, the dweller 
in Golgotha on whose forehead was written the hie 
jacet of a dead soul ! 

The antithesis of the picture, bold, Medea-like, tall 


178 


THE castaway; 


as a Pythoness, with hair of night, black flashing eyes 
and passion blent with ferocity, projected itself, like a 
materialization in a seance, from the air. He turned his 
head with a sensation of bodily presence, though he 
knew the one of whom he thought was then in ISTaples. 
If she should enter and find him with that ivory in his 
hand, what a rare sirocco would be let loose ! 

He tried to smile, but the old arrant raillery would 
not come. The miniature blotted out the figure of the 
Fornarina. Against his will, it suggested all the pure 
things that he had ever known — ^his youthful romance, 
his dreams, Ada, his child ! 

Holding it, he walked to a folded mirror in a comer 
of the wall and opened its panels. There had been a 
time when he had said no appetite should ever rule him ; 
the face he saw reflected now wore the lines of incorrigi- 
ble self-indulgence, animalism, the sinister badge of the 
bacchanal. 

^Ts that you, George Gordon ?” he asked. 

The ghosts drew nearer. They peered over his shoul- 
ders. He felt their fingers grasping at him. He cursed 
them. By what right did they follow him? By what 
damnable chance, ruled by what infernal jugglery, came 
this painted semblance to open old tombs? Something 
had awakened in him — it was the side that recollected, 
remorseless and impenitent but no longer benumbed, 
writhing with smarting vitality. Awake, it recoiled 
abashed from the voiceless vade retro of that symbol. 
What part had he in that purity whose visible emblem 
mocked and derided him? "What comradeship did life 
hold for him save the hideous Gorgon of memory, the 


THE CASTAWAY 


179 


Cerberus of ill fame, spirits of tbe dark, garish fellows 
of the half-world — ^They whose steps go down to hell 

A fury, demoniac, terrible, fell on him. He seized 
the miniature, dashed it on the floor, stamped it with 
his heel and crushed and ground it into indistinguisha- 
ble fragments. 

Then he sprang up, and with an oath whose note was 
echoed by the tame raven croaking on the landing, 
rushed down the stairway and threw himself into his 
gondola. 

The moon rose red as a house afire. Before it paled, 
he had passed the lagoon. In the dim light that pre- 
saged the sodden dawn he leaped ashore on the main- 
land, pierced the damp laurel thickets that skirted the 
river Brenta and plunged into the forest. 


CHAPTER XXV 


TERESA MEETS A STRANGER 

Through the twittering dawn, with its multitudinous 
damp scents, its stubble-fields of maize glimpsed through 
the stripped ilex trees, whose twigs scrawled black hiero- 
glyphics on the hueless sky, Gordon strode sharply, heed- 
less of direction. 

The convulsion of rage with which he had destroyed 
the miniature had finished the work the latter’s advent 
had begun. The nerve, stirring from its opiate sleep to 
a consciousness of dull pain, had jarred itself to agony. 
His mind was awake, but the wind had swept saltly 
through the coverts of his passion, and their denizens 
crouched shivering. 

The sight of a dove-tinted villa guarded by cypress 
spears — a gray gathering of cupolas — told him he had 
walked about two miles. This was La Mira, one of 
the estates of the Contessa Albrizzi, a great name in 
Venice. He turned aside into the deserted olive grove 
above the river. A slim walk meandered here, thick 
with dead leaves, with a cleared slope stretching down 
to where the deep-dyed Brenta twisted like a drenched 
ribbon on its way to the salt marshes. Fronting this 
breach, Gordon came abruptly upon a wooden shrine, 
with a weather-fretted prayer bench. 

( 180 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


181 


He stopped, regarding it half-absently, his surcharged 
thought rearranging disused images out of some dusty 
speculative storehouse. A more magnificent shrine rose 
on every campo of Venice. They stood for a priestly 
hierarchy, an elaborate clericalism — ^the mullioned wor- 
ship that to his life seemed only the variform expression 
of the futile earth-want, the satiric hallucination of 
finite and mortal brain that grasped at immortality and 
the infinite. This, set in the isolation of the place, 
seemed a symbol of more primitive faith and prayer, of 
religion rough-hewn, shorn of its formal accessories. 

He went a step nearer, seeing a small book lying be- 
side the prayer bench. He picked it up. It was a re- 
print in English of his own ^Trisoner of Chillon,” from 
a local press in Padua. 

A sense of incongruity smote him. It was the poem 
he had composed in Geneva. He readily surmised that 
it was through Shelley the verses had reached his pub- 
lisher in England, to meet his eye a year afterward, 
in a foreign dress, in an Italian forest. 

He turned the pages curiously, conning the scarce re- 
membered stanzas. Could he himself have created 
them ? The instant wonder passed, blotted out by lines 
he saw penned in Italian on the fly-leaf — ^lines that 
he read with a tightening at his heart and an electric- 
like rush of strange sensations such as he had never felt. 
For what was written there, in the delicate tracery of 
a feminine hand, and in phrases simple and pure as 
only the secret heart of a girl could have framed them, 
was a prayer : 

^^Oh, my God! Graciously hear me, I taJce encourage^ 


182 


THE CASTAWAY 


merit from the assurance of Thy word to pray to Thee 
in behalf of the author of this booh which has so pleased 
me. Thou desirest not the death of a sinner — savSj 
therefore, him whom Venice calls Hhe wicTced milord,* 
Thou who by sin art offended and by penance satisfied, 
give to him the desire to return to the good and to glo- 
rify the talents Thou hast so richly bestowed upon him. 
And grant that the punishment his evil behavior has 
already brought him be more than sufficient to cover 
his guilt from Thine eyes, 

*'0h blessed Virgin, Queen of the most holy Rosary! 
Intercede and obtain for me of thy Son our Lord this 
grace! Amen,** 

A step fell behind him. He turned half-dazed, his 
mind full of conflict. A girl stood near him, delicate 
and alert and wand-like as a golden willow, her curling 
amber hair loosely caught, her sea-blue eyes wide and a 
little startled. She wore a Venetian hood, out of whose 
green sheath her face looked, like lilies under leaves. 

Gordon’s mind came back to the present of time and 
space across an illimitable distance. 

He stared, half believing himself in some automatic 
hallucination. There had been no time to speculate 
upon what manner of hand had written those words, 
what manner of woman’s soul had so weirdly touched 
his own out of the void. Knowledge came staggeringly. 
Hers was the face of the miniature that his heel had 
crushed to powder. 

He noted that her eyes had fallen to the book in his 
hand, as mechanically he asked, in Italian : 

^^This book is yours, Signorina?” 


THE CASTAWAX 


183 


There was a faint flush of color in her cheek, 
for she saw the volume was open at the written page. 

Gordon was looking at her palely, seeing her face set 
in a silver oval. Eyes, hair and lips; there in lifeless 
pigments, here in flesh and blood ! The same yet more, 
for here were unnunned youth, slumbrous, glorious 
womanhood unawaked, stirring rosily in every vein, giv- 
ing a passionate human tint to the spiritual impression. 
And underneath all, the same unsullied something he 
had raged at that black night, even while her prayer for 
him lay here dumb at the feet of Our Lady of Sorrows ! 

His voice sounded unreal to his own ears as he spoke, 
his mind feeling its way through tumbled predisposi- 
tions to an unfamiliar goal. ^Tf apology be owed,^’ he 
said, ^Tor reading what was intended for purer eyes 
than this world^s, I most humbly offer it, Signorina! 
I did so quite inadvertently.^^ 

He held out the book as he spoke, and her fingers 
closed over it, the gesture betraying confusion. Who was 
this stranger, with face of such wan luster and gray- 
blue eyes so sadly brilliant? Some sense in her dis- 
cerned a deeper, unguessed suffering that made her 
heart throb painfully. 

^Tf there be an ear which is open to human appeal,” 
he added gently, ^ffhat prayer was registered, I know !” 

He spoke calmly enough, but a hundred thoughts 
were ricochetting through his mind. Pulpits had ful- 
minated against him, priest and laic had thundered him 
down, but when — ^in London, in Geneva, in Venice — ^had 
a single disinterested voice been lifted in a prayer for 
him before ? And this girl had never seen him. 

^Tf there be!” Her thought stirred protestingly. 


184 


THE CASTAWAY 


^^Ah, Signore, surely there is Someone who hears ! How 
could one live and pray otherwise 

How indeed? To such a one as she, to pray and to 
live were one and the same thing. Prayer to her was 
not a mental process — it was as instinctive and uncon- 
scious as breathing. For such as she, shrines like this 
were erected ; not for him ! So, across the riot in his 
breast, Gordon’s waked habit paused to smile — a satire- 
smile, at itself, at the new sweet flower that was lifting 
head there amidst desert ruins. 

The girl caught the mixed feeling in his face. He 
was not Italian — ^his accent had told her that. He was 
an Englishman, too, perhaps. ^^Do you know him. Sig- 
nore ?” 

His head turned quickly toward her. In truth, had 
he ever really known himself? ^TTes,” he answered 
after a pause. ‘T know him, Signorina — far better than 
most of the world.” 

She was gazing with varied feelings, her heart beating 
strangely, curiosity and wonder merging. In her few 
short weeks at La Mira, fresh from the convent, the 
Englishman of whom all Venice told tales had been but 
a dim and unsubstantial figure. She had thought of 
the grim Palazzo Mocenigo with a kind of awe, as a 
child regards a mysterious cavern bat-haunted and 
shunned. Into her poetic world of dreams had fallen 
the little book, and thereafter the shadowy figure that 
roamed nightly Venice had taken on the brilliant and 
piteous outline of a fallen angel. Here, wonderfully, 
was a man who knew him, whose speech could visualize 
the figure that had grown to possess such fascination. 
Questions were on her tongue, but she could not frame 


THE CASTAWAY 


185 


them. She hesitated, opening and closing the book in 
her hands. 

^Is he all they say of him 

‘^Who knows, Signorina?^^ 

It was an involuntary exclamation that sounded like 
acquiescence. The girPs face fell. In her thought, the 
man of her dreaming, lacking an open advocate, had 
gained the secret one of sympathy. Was it all true 
then? Her voice faltered a little. 

have not believed. Signore, that with a heart all 
evil one could write — so !” 

Into the raw blend of tangent emotions which were 
enwrapping Gordon, had entered, as she spoke, another 
well-defined. Never in his life, for his own sake, had he 
cared whether one or many believed truth or lie of him. 
But now there thrilled in him, new-horn, a desire that 
this slight girl should not judge him as did the world. 
The feeling lent his words a curious energy: 

^^Many tales are told, Signorina, that are true — some 
that are false. If he were here — and I speak from cer- 
tain knowledge of him — ^he would not wish me to ex- 
tenuate ; least of all to you who have written what is on 
that leaf. Perhaps that has been one of his faults, that 
he has never justified himself. By common report he 
has committed all crimes, Signorina. He has thought 
it useless to deny, since slander is not guilt, nor is de- 
nial innocence, and since neither good nor bad report 
could lighten or add to his wretchedness.^^ 

The tint of her clear eyes deepened. knew he was 
wretched. Signore! It was for that reason I left the 
prayer here overnight before Our Lady of Sorrows — be- 
cause I have heard he is an outcast from his own coun- 


186 


THE CASTAWAY. 


try and his own people. And then, because of this/^ 
She touched the volume. ^^Ah, I have read little of all 
he has "written — ^this is the only poem — for I read his 
English tongue so poorly; but in this his heart speaks. 
Signore. It speaks of pain and suffering and bondage. 
It was not only the long-ago prisoner he sang of ; it was 
himself ! himself ! I felt it — ^here, like a hurt."’^ 

She had spoken rapidly, stumblingly, and ended with 
a hand pressed on her heart. Her own feeling, as she 
suddenly became aware of her vehemence, startled her, 
and she half turned away, her lips trembling. 

A sentiment at variance with his whole character was 
fighting in Gordon. The Babel he had builded of curses 
was being smitten into confusion. Something granite- 
like, mural and sealed by time, was breaking and melt- 
ing unaccountably away. His face was turned from 
hers — ^toward the slope below, where the river bubbled 
and sparkled. When he spoke it was in words choked 
and impeded : 

think if he were here — this wicked milord — he 
would bless you for that, Signorina. He has suffered, 
no doubt. Perhaps if there had been more who felt 
what he wrote — as you have felt, — if there had been 
more to impute good of him rather than evil — I am 
quite sure if this could have been, Signorina, he would 
not now be in Venice the man for whom you have "writ- 
ten that prayer. I know him well enough to say this. It 
is through his wretchedness that I have come to know 
him — ^because, like him, I am a wanderer.’^ 

A softer light suffused her cheek. The words smote 
her strangely. His pain-engraved face brought a mist 
to her eyes. She was a child of the sun, with blood 


THE CASTAWAY 


187 


leaping to quick response, and a heart a well of undis- 
covered impulses. The wicked milord’s form lost dis- 
tinction and faded. Here was a being mysterious, 
wretched, too, and alone — ^not intangible as was he of 
the Palazzo Mocenigo, hut beside her, speaking with a 
voice which thrilled every nerve of her sensitive nature. 
Unconsciously she drew closer to him. 

At that moment a call came under the bare boughs: 
^^Teresa ! Teresa !” 

She drew back. ^Tt is la Contessa/' she said; ‘T 
must hasten,” and started quickly through the trees. 

His voice overtook her. ^^Signorina !” The word 
vibrated. ^^Will you give me the prayer?” He had 
come toward her as she stopped. ^^There is a charm in 
such things, perhaps.” 

T^ i voice called again, and more impatiently : ^^Te- 
resa !” 

She opened the book and tore out the leaf with un- 
certain fingers. As he took it his hand met hers. He 
bent his head and touched it with his lips. She fiushed 
deeply, then turned and ran through the naked trees 
toward the villa shielded in its cypress rows. 

The girl ran breathlessly to the terrace, where a lady 
leaned from a window with a gently chiding tongue : 

^^Do they teach you to do wholly without sleep in con- 
vents?” she cried. ^^Do you not know your father and 
Count Guiccioli, your lord and master to be, are to ar- 
rive to-day from Eavenna? You will be wilted before 
the evening.” 

The girl entered the house. 

Under the olive wood a man, strangely moved, a rus- 
tling paper still in his hand, walked back with quick 


188 


THE CASTAWAY 


strides to his gondola, striving to exorcise a chuckling 
fiend within him, who, with mocking and malignant 
emphasis, kept repeating: 

^^Oh blessed Virgin, Queen of the most holy Eosary! 
Intercede and obtain for me, of Thy Son our Lord, this 
grace 


CHAPTEE XXVI 


A WOMAN OF FIRE AND DREAMS 

From the moment those lips touched her hand in 
that meeting at the wood shrine Teresa Gamba felt her 
life unfold to rose-veined visions. 

Her unmothered childhood and the placid convent 
school years at Bagnacavallo, near Eavenna, had known 
no mystery other than her day-dreams had fashioned. 
She had dreamed much: of the time when she should 
marry and redeem the fortunes of her house, which, 
despite untainted blood and ancient provincial name, 
was impoverished; of the freedom of Italy, the sole 
topic, aside from his endless chemical experiments, of 
which her father, now growing feeble, never tired; of 
her elder brother, away in Wallachia, secretary to the 
Greek Prince Mavrocordato ; of the few books she read, 
and the fewer people she met. But these dreams had 
not possessed the charm of novelty. Even when, at 
eighteen, through family friendship, she became a 
member of the Albrizzi household and exchanged the 
dull convent walls for the garlanded La Mira — even 
with those rare days when she saw the gay splendor of 
Venice from a curtained gondola — even then her mental 
life suffered small change. 

( 189 ) 


190 


THE CASTAWAY, 


The marriage arranged for her with Count Gniccioli, 
the oldest and richest nobleman of Kavenna, a miser 
and twice a widower, had aroused an interest in her 
mind scarce greater than had the tales of the English^ 
'man of the Palazzo Mocenigo. Such marriages were of 
common occurrence in the life she knew: the ^Vicked 
milord” was a stranger thing — one to speculate more 
endlessly upon. 

It was Tita, the gigantic black-bearded gondolier and 
door-porter, a servant in the Gamba family since she 
was born, whom she had brought with her as her own 
attendant — one who worshiped her devoutly, and in 
whose care her father intrusted her more confidently 
than to any duenna — who had first pointed out to her 
the gloomy building which shielded that mysterious ce- 
cupant, and had piqued her interest with weird tales 5 
how in his loneliness for human kind the outcast sur- 
rounded himself with tamed ravens and paroquets, and 
used for a wine cup a human skull, that of a woman he 
had once loved. With her rapt eyes on the palazzo 
front, Teresa had wondered and shuddered in never 
ending surmise. 

The little volume from the Paduan press had deep- 
ened her curiosity and given it virgin fields in which to 
wander. The English books in her father’s library were 
prose and for the most part concerned his pet hobby, 
chemistry. This volume, given her on a saint’s day by 
the Contessa Albrizzi, who took pride in her protegee's 
scholarship, was her first glimpse of English poetry, and 
her pulses had leaped at the new charm. Thereafter the 
personality of the contradictory being who had written 
it had lived in her daily thought. She retained the 


THE CASTAWAY 


191 


faiths of her childhood unshattered, and the prayer she 
had left at the shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows sprang 
from an impulse as natural as it was significant. 

But that meeting in the wood had turned the course 
of her imaginings. ^^A wanderer — like him” ; the 
words had bridged the chasm between the dreaming and 
the real. The secret thought given to the ^^wicked mi- 
lord” found itself absorbed by a nearer object. The 
palazzo on the Grand Canal grew more remote, and the 
stranger she had seen stepped at a single stride into a 
place her mind had already prepared. 

The blush with which she had taken the book from 
Gordon’s hand was one of mere self-consciousness; the 
vivid, burning color which overspread her face as she 
ran back through the trees was something very differ- 
ent. It was a part of her throbbing heart, of the trem- 
ulous confusion that overran her whole body, called into 
life by the touch of those palely carved lips upon her 
fingers. His colorless face — a face with the outline of 
the Apollo Belvedere — ^the gray magnetic eyes, the 
words he had said and their accent of sadness, all were 
full of suggestive mystery. Why was he a wanderer — 
like that other? Hot for a kindred reason, surely ! He 
could not be evil also! Bather it must have been be- 
cause of some loss, some hurt of love which time might ; 
remedy. 

Her agile fancy constructed more than one hypothe- 
sis, spun more than one romance, all of like ending. 
A new love would heal his heart. Some time he would 
look into a woman’s eyes — not as he had looked into 
hers ; some one would feel his lips — ^not as he had kissed 
her hand. She in the meantime would be no longer a 


193 


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girl ; she would be the Contessa Guiccioli, with a palazzo 
of her own in Eavenna, and — a husband. 

But, somehow, this reflection brought no satisfaction. 
The old count she had seen more than once driving by 
in state when she played as a child in the convent 
woods; and that he with his riches should desire her, 
had given her father great pride, which was reflected in 
her. Her suitor had brought his age and ailments to 
La Mira on the very day she had met the stranger at 
the shrine — ^the day her heart had beat so oddly — and 
with his arrival, her marriage had projected itself out 
of the hazy future and become a dire thing of the pres- 
ent. She felt a fresh distaste of his sharp yellow eyes, 
his cracked laugh. His eighty wiry years seemed as 
many centuries. She became moody, put her father off 
and took refuge in whims. The contessa advised the 
city, and the week’s end saw the Albrizzi palazzo thrown 
open. 

In Venice, Teresa’s spirits rose. She loved to watch 
the bright little shops opening like morning-glories, the 
sky-faring pigeons a silver quiver of wings; to lie in 
the gondola waiting while her father drank his brandy 
at the piazzetta caffe; to buy figs from little lame Pas- 
quale, who watched for her at a shop-door in a narrow 
calle near at hand ; to see the gaudy flotillas of the car- 
nival, and the wedding processions, fresh from the 
church, crossing the lagoon to leave their gifts at the 
various island-convents; or, propelled by Tita’s swing- 
ing oar, to glide slowly in the purpling sunset shadows, 
by the Piazza San Marco, around red-towered San 
Giorgio, and so home again on color-soaked canals in the 
gleaming ruby of the afterglow, through a city bub- 


THE CASTAWAY 


193 


bling with ivory domes and glistening like an opaFa 
heart under its tiara of towers. 

She scarcely told the secret to her own heart — that it 
was one face she looked to see, one mysterious stranger 
whose image haunted every campo, every balcony and ev- 
ery bridge. She flushed whenever she thought of that 
kiss on her Angers ; in the daytime she felt it there like 
a sentient thing; at night when she woke, her hand 
burned her cheek. 

Who was he ? Why had he asked her for the prayer ? 
What had he done with it? Was he still in Venice? 
Should she see him again? She wondered, as, parting 
the gondola tenda, she watched her father cross the 
pave for his cognac. 

^^Are there many English in Venice, Tita?^^ 

The gondolier, lounging like a brilliant-hued lizard, 
shrugged his shoulders. ^^Bellissima, there are hun- 
dreds in the season. They come and go. They are all 
lasagnonij, these Englishmen !” 

Teresa’s sigh checked itself. Tita suddenly turned 
his head. Across the piazzetta a crowd was gathering. 
It centered before the shop at whose front the five-year- 
old fig-seller was used to watch for her. 

^^He fell from the scaffolding !” said a voice. 

^Tf it should be little Pasquale!” cried Teresa, and 
springing out, ran quickly forward. Tita waited to 
secure the gondola before he followed her. 

A sad accident had happened. Before the calle a 
platform had been erected from which spectators might 
watch the flotillas of the carnival. Little Pasquale’s de- 
light was a tame sparrow, whose home was a wicker 
cage, and climbing to sun his pet when he had been left 


194 


THE CASTAWAY 


to tend the empty shop, the child had slipped and fallen 
to the pavement. 

Teresa broke through the circle of bystanders and 
knelt by the tumbled little body, looking at the tiny 
face now so waxen. The neighbors thronged about, 
stupefied and hindering. A woman ran to fetch the 
mother, gossiping with a neighbor. Another called loud- 
ly for a priest. 

The girl, looking up, was bewildered by the tumult. 
^^He must be got in,^^ she murmured, half helplessly, for 
the people ringed them round. 

A voice answered close beside her : will carry him, 

Signorina’’ — and a form she knew bent beside her, and 
very gently lifted the small bundle in his arms. 

Teresa’s heart bounded. Through these days she had 
longed to hear that voice again how vainly! How, in 
this moment, she was brought suddenly close to him. 
She ceased to hear the sounds about her — saw only him. 
She sprang up and led the way through the press, down 
the close damp calle and to the shop where the child 
lived. 

^^Dog of the Virgin! He need touch no finger to 
child of mine!” swore a carpenter from the adjoining 
campo. 

^^Nor mine !” 

• ^^Why didn’t you carry him in yourself, then?” 
growled Giuseppe, the fruit-vender. ^^Standing there 
like a bronze pig ! What have you against the English- 
man ? Didn’t he buy your brother-in-law a new gondola 
when the piling smashed it ?” 

*'Scellerator sneered the carpenter. ^^Why is his 


THE CASTAWAY 


195 


face so white? Like a potato sprout in a cellar! He 
is so evil he fears the sun I” 

The fruit-vender turned away disdainfully. His foot 
kicked a shapeless wicker object — it was little Pasquale’s 
cage smashed flat. The sparrow inside was gasping. He 
picked up the cage and carried it to the shop. 

In the inner, ill-lighted room, Gordon laid the child 
on a couch. He had spoken no further word to Teresa. 
At the first sight of her, kneeling in the street, he had 
started visibly as he had done in the forest of La Mira 
when he recognized her face as that of the miniature. 
How he was feeling her presence beside him with a 
curious thrill not unlike her own — a pleasure deeply 
mixed with pain that was almost a physical pang. 

Since that dawn walk above the plane-treed Brenta he 
had been treading strange ways. In the hours that fol- 
lowed, remorse had been born in him. And as the first 
indrawn breath racks the half-drowned body with agony 
greater than that of the death it has already tasted, so 
the man had suffered. During a fortnight, words writ- 
ten on a sheet of paper that he carried in his pocket had 
rung through his brain. Day after day, as he sat in his 
gloomy palazzo, he had heard them; night after night 
they had floated with him as his gondola bore him 
through the waterways ringing with the estro of the car- 
nival. To escape them he had fled again and again to 
the black phial, but when he awoke the pain was still 
with him, instinct and unrenounceable. It was more 
acute at this moment than it had ever been. 

Teresa scarcely noted the fruit-vender as he put the 
battered cage into her hand just before its feathered 
occupant breathed its last. Her look, fixed on Gordon, 


196 


THE CASTAWAY 


was still eloquent with the surprise. She saw the same 
pale face, the same deep eyes, the same chiselled curve 
of lips. His voice, too, as he despatched the kind- 
hearted Giuseppe for a surgeon on the Eiva, had the 
same cadence of sadness. She had noticed that his step 
halted as he walked, as though from weakness. And 
surely there was illness in his face, too! Had there 
been any tender hands near him — as tender as those 
with which he now examined the unconscious child ? 

As Gordon bent above him, little Pasquale opened his 
eyes. His gaze fell first not on the man or on Teresa, 
but on the broken cage beside him, where the bird lay 
still, one claw standing stiffly upright. He tried to lift 
his head, and called the sparrow’s name. 

There was no answering chirp. The claw was very 
still. 

Then little Pasquale saw the faces about him and 
knew what had happened. 

^^He’s dead !” he shrilled^ and burst into tears. 


CHAPTER XXVII 

THE EVIL EYE 

Tears, too, had rushed to Teresa’s eyes, with a sweet, 
glad sense of something not akin to grief. Her hand 
on the couch in the semi-darkness touched another and 
she drew it away, trembling. 

Suddenly a wail came from the calle, a hurried step 
crossed the shop floor, and the slattern mother burst 
into the room. Close behind followed Tita, who, seeing 
his mistress, blocked the inner door with his huge frame 
against the curious, with whom the place now over- 
flowed. 

The weeping woman had thrown herself beside the 
couch where the child lay, his eyes closed again. All at 
once she saw the man who stood above her, and to Te- 
resa’s astonishment sprang up and spat out coarse im-, 
precations. 

^^The evil eye!” she screamed. ^^Take the Inglese 
away and fetch some holy water ! He has the evil eye I” 

Teresa saw the spasm of pain that crossed the color- 
less face. ^^Xo, no !” she cried. 

^^What did I say !” sneered the carpenter. 

Tita’s great hand took him by the throat. ^^Silence, 
( 197 ) 


198 


THE CASTAWAY 


devout jellyfish he said, I crack your skull. 
Didn’t you hear the signorina 

^^The evil eye !” wailed the woman, flinging back inky 
hair from her brows. ^^He looked at the heart-of-my- 
life or he would not have fallen !” 

^Tor shame!” protested Teresa indignantly. 
who carried him in his own arms ! Ah, do not listen !” 
She turned to Gordon appealingly. ^^She is mad to say 
such things! Let us go,” she added hastily, as mur- 
murs swelled from the shop. ^‘We can do no more !” 

^^Go, son of the Black One!” screamed the woman. 
^^Go before my child dies !” 

Gordon had distinguished in the girl’s voice a note 
of pity and of fear for his safety, and a flash of smile 
softened the bitterness of his lips. 

‘^You are right, Signorina,” he answered, and pre- 
ceded her. The people parted as they passed, some peer- 
ing maliciously, some shame-faced. Tita, bringing up 
the rear, glared about him, his fist clenched like a ham- 
mer. He knew well enough who the stranger was, but 
his signorina walked with him and that was sufficient. 
Tita knew what was expected of him. 

It was growing dusky as they emerged. The group 
before the shop had run to watch the great surgeon 
alighting at the water-stairs. The dozen steps that 
brought them to the open piazzetta they walked in si- 
lence. 

There Teresa paused, wishing to say she knew not 
what, burning with sympathy, yet timid with confusion. 
The street seemed to wear an unwonted, un-everyday 
luster, yet she knew that around the corner lay little 
Pasquale woefully hurt, in full view Tita was unlash- 


THE CASTAWAY 


199 


ing the gondola, and across the piazzetta she could see 
the entrance of the caffe where her father was sipping 
his cognac. A fear lest the latter should appear and 
find her absent from the gondola mixed with the wave 
of feeling with which she held out her hand to the man 
beside her. 

^Toor little fig-merchant!” she said — the scene with 
the mother was too painfully recent to touch upon at 
once. ^^He watched for my gondola every day. I hope 
he is not badly hurt. What do you think, Signore ?” 

^^Ho bones were broken,” he rejoined. ^‘But as to 
internal injury, I could not tell. I shall hope doubly 
for him,” he added, ^^since you love him.” 

Her eyes sought the ground, suddenly shy. have 
loved him from the first. You know, he cannot play 
like other children. He is lame; I think that is why I 
love him.” 

Gordon’s lips compressed, his cheeks fiushed with an 
odd sensitiveness that had long been calloused. But he 
saw instantly that the remark had been innocent of al- 
lusion. A weird forgotten memory shot jaggedly 
through his brain. Years ago — how many years ago ! — • 
he had overheard a girl’s voice repeat a mocking an- 
tithesis : ^T)o you think I could ever care for that lame 
boy ?” This girl facing him had the same fair hair and 
blue eyes of that boyish love of his. The resemblance 
caught him. Was it this that had haunted him in the 
miniature? Was this subconscious influence what had 
inspired at La Mira his aching desire that she should 
not think worse of him than might be ? 

Her voice recalled him. She had not understood that 
veiled look, but it brought to her lips what had been 


200 


THE CASTAWAY 


nearest to her thought — ^the resentment and regret that 
the virago’s shrilling voice had roused. 

^^What must you think of our Venice, Signore!” she 
said. ^^But they knew no better — ^those poor people. 
They cannot tell evil from good.” 

‘Tt is no matter, Signorina/’ Gordon answered. ^^Do 
not give it a thought. It was not unnatural, perhaps.” 

^^Not unnatural 1” she echoed. ‘^Natural to think you 
evil? Ah, Signore — when your every touch was kind- 
ness ! Could she not see in your face ?” 

She paused abruptly, coloring under his gaze. 

The words and the flush had cut him like a knife. 
The lines of ravage he had challenged in the mirror 
her innocence had misread. In the olive wood she had 
seen only wretchedness, here only mercy. 

^^The face is a sorry index, sometimes, Signorina. 
In mine the world may not see what you see.” 

He had schooled his tone to lightness, but her mood, 
still tense-drawn, felt its strain. She spoke impulsive- 
ly, bravely, her heart beating hard. 

^^What I see there — it is pain, not evil. Signore; sor- 
row, but not all your own; loneliness and regret and 
feelings that people like those” — she threw out her hand 
in a passionate gesture toward the shop — ^^can never 
understand I” 

^Tt is not only such as they!” he interposed. ^^The 
world, your world, would not understand, either. It is 
only here and there one flnds one — like you, Signorina 
— with sympathy as pure as yours.” 

Her face had turned the tint that autumn paints 
wild strawberry leaves, a rich translucent flush that 
deepened the light in her eyes. It was a lyric world to- 


THE CASTAWAY 


201 


day ! J ust then Tita’s voice spoke warningly from the 
water-side. She looked around, and through the gath- 
ering shadows, saw her father^s form standing in the 
door of the caffe across the piazzetta. 

^^Oh she said confusedly, and turning, hastily 
crossed the pavement to the gondola. 

Tita’s oar swung vigorously on the return, for 
Count Gamba was in haste. He was voluble, but Teresa, 
as she looked out through the curtains, was inattentive. 

Swiftly as they went, a gondola outstripped them 
on the canal. It held the low-browed carpenter whom 
Tit a had throttled in the shop. In addition to a super- 
stitious mind, the carpenter possessed a malicious tongue 
and loved a sensation. He knew that the father of 
little Pasquale was at work that day on the Giudecca. 
As the doctor had driven all save the mother from the 
shop, there was little profit to be got by remaining. He 
therefore hastened to bear the news to the quay where 
the stone masons labored overtime. He had drawn his 
own conclusions. The child was mortally hurt — dying, 
doubtless — and as he revolved in his mind the words 
with which he should make the announcement to the 
father, the wicked milord and his evil eye entered with 
all their dramatic values. 

Teresa noted the speed of the gondola as it passed to 
tie to the rising wall, saw the gesticulations of the blue- 
clad workmen as the man it bore told his story. Even 
in the failing light she saw the gesture of grief and 
despair with which one, the center of all eyes, threw 
up his arms and sank down on to the stones, his head 
in his hands. As her father’s gondola swept by, the 


202 


THE CASTAWAY 


figure sprang up suddenly and his brown hand flew to 
his belt. 

Pasquale — dead!^^ he shouted; ‘T^ll kill the 
IngleseT 

Teresa stifled a cry. Her father had seen and heard 
also, though he did not know the explanation. Nor 
could he have guessed what an icy fear had gripped the 
heart of the girl beside him. 

^^An ugly look!^^ he muttered, as the frantic form 
scrambled into the carpenter’s craft. 

Teresa could not speak. Her horrified gaze was on 
the sinister face, the red cap like a sans-culotte, the eye 
glancing under it tigerishly. Little Pasquale was dead 
then! The father blamed the Englishman.' His look 
was one of murder ! He would kill him — of whom she 
had thought and dreamed, the man in whose heart had 
been only tenderness! Kill him? A panging dread 
seized her. She felt as if she must cry out; and all the 
time Tita’s oar swept her on through the dusk, further 
away from him whom danger threatened — him whom, 
in some way, no matter how, she must warn ! 

A strange helplessness descended upon her. She did 
not even know his name, or his habitation. To her he 
was but one of the hundreds Tita had said were in 
Venice. That the gondolier himself could have en- 
lightened her did not cross her mind. She felt the im- 
possibility of appealing to her father — she had not even 
dared tell him she had left the gondola. What could she 
do ? Trust to Tita to find him ? Could he know every 
line of that face as did she? Even in the dark — in 
crowds — she told herself that she would know him, 
would somehow feel his presence. But how to do it? 


THE CASTAWAY 


20a^ 


How to elude the surveillaiLce at home? And if she- 
could do so, where to look for him ? 

Her reverie was broken by the gondola’s bumping 
against the landing. Her father’s talk had been run- 
ning on like a flowing spout. 

^^A palazzo in Eavenna flner than this,” he was say- 
ing, ^^and you the Contessa Guiccioli ! Shall we not be 
proud — eh, my Teresa?” 

She realized suddenly of what he had been babbling. 
As she disembarked at the water-stairs, she looked up 
at the balcony. There, beside the stately Contessa Al- 
brizzi, an old man was leaning, hawk-eyed, white-haired 
and thin. He blew her a kiss from his sallow Angers. 

Her nervous tension relaxed in a sudden quiver of 
aversion. 

^^Ho, no !” she said in a choked voice, with clenched 
fingers. will not marry till I choose! Why must 
-every one be in such haste ?” 

And with these broken sentences, that left her father 
standing in blank astonishment, she hurried before him< 
into the house. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


THE HAUNTED MAN 

The majestic gateway of the Palazzo Mocenigo was 
dark as Gordon entered save for the single lamp always 
lit at nightfall. Fletcher served his master’s snpper 
in the great upper room, but to-night, as too often hap- 
pened, it was scarcely tasted. Long after the valet had 
retired, his watchful ear heard the uneven step pacing 
up and down, up and down, on the echoing floor. 

A restless mood was upon Gordon, the restlessness of 
infinite yearning and discontent. He was tasting anew 
the gall and wormwood of self-reproach. 

He had felt the touch of Teresa’s hand as it lay 
against the couch in that squalid room — had known it 
trembled — and the low words she had spoken in the 
street, standing, as it seemed to him, with that forest 
shrine ever for background, were still in his ears. 

He had seen her but twice, for but a few brief mo- 
ments. Once she had come to him on the wings of a 
prayer; and again to-day over the hurt body of a child. 
Each meeting had touched the raw nerve in him which 
had first throbbed to anguish at sight of her miniature. 
Each time he had heard a voice call to him as if it were 
the ghost of some buried thing he had one day known 
and lost, speaking a tongue sweet though untranslatable. 

( 204 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


205 


Hours went by. Gordon^s step flagged. He ap- 
proached the desk on which were scattered distraught 
leaves of manuscript, blotted and interlined. He swept 
these into his hand and read for a moment Beneath 
the outer crust of flippancy and satire a strange new 
development had begun. But the mental habit had 
persisted strong during the moral bouleversement, as 
the polar glaze spreads its algid mockery above the 
warm currents of an Arctic spring. How his muse had 
bemocked him, he thought. A drama of madness, 
whose dramatis personae were magicians and spirits of 
the nether world — stanzas hovering between insane 
laughter and heart-broken sobs, between supplications 
land blasphemies — cantos whose soul was license, though 
their surpassing music thrilled like the laughter of a 
falling Lucifer ! 

He flung the sheets down, went to the window and 
threw it open, leaning out across the balcony that hung 
over the canal. It was a night of Italian sorcery, the 
sky an infinite wistaria canopy nailed with white-blown 
stars; of musical water shimmering into broken bits of 
moon; of misty silver air. Around and beneath him 
spread the enchanted city, a marvel of purple and moth- 
er-of-pearl, a jewel in verd and porphyry. Gondolas, 
dim in the muffled shadow, or ablaze with strung lan- 
terns and echoing with tinkling virginals and softer 
laughter, glided below, on their way to the masked ball 
of the Cavalchina. The fleeting thrill, the bubble pag- 
eant; what did they all — what did anything mean now 
for him ? 

Looking out, Gordon’s gaze went far. He had a vi- 


206 


THE CASTAWAY 


sion of England as he had last seen it across the jasper 
channel — ^green fields and white cliffs in a smother of 
vapors; of London with its pomp, its power, its calum- 
nies, its wicked magical vitality. And he spoke to it, 
murmuring sentences not sneering now, but broken with 
a stranger soft emotion : 

^^What you have done — ^you island of home! If I 
could tell you! I had the immortal fiame — the touch 
of the divine! It was mine — all mine, for the world! 
You took me — ^my boyhood and embittered it, my youth 
and debauched it, my manhood and robbed it! You 
jeered my first songs and it stung me, and when I 
cried out in pain, you laughed and flattered. When 
you tired of me, you branded me with this mark and 
cast me out !” He turned again to the desk where lay 
the manuscript. ‘^What I write now has the mark of 
the beast ! It is the seraph’s song with the satyr laugh 
cutting up through it, and the cloven hoof of the devil 
of hatred that will not down in me ! And yet I wrote 
the poem that she loves ! I wrote that — I ! My God ! 
It was only two years ago! And now — shall I never 
hear that voice singing in my soul again? Shall I 
never write so again ? Never — ^never — never ?” 

A pungent, heavy smell of flowers filled his nostrils. 
He turned from the window, quivering. Fletcher had 
entered behind him and was arranging a mass of blooms 
in a bowl. 

The Fornarina! She had returned from Naples, 
then. It was her barbaric way of announcing her com- 
ing, for she could not write. She had been absent a 
month — ^how much had happened in that month ! 

The man, with the excoriate surface of recollection 


THE CASTAWAY 


207 


exposed, with the quick of remorse laid open, suddenly 
could not bear it. He threw a cloak about him and 
went rapidly down to the water-stairs. 

The gondolier came running to the steps, catching 
up the long oar as he sprang to position. 

^^Whither, Excellence?” he asked. 

A burst of music, borne on the air across roofs and 
up echoing canals, came faintly to Gordon from the far- 
away Square of St. Mark. 

^^To the Piazza,” he said. 


CHAPTEK XXIX 


Teresa’s awakening 

Teresa, meanwhile, had been facing her problem — 
how to warn the Englishman of his danger. During 
the slow hours while Gordon sat gazing into the dis- 
torted mirror of his own thought, she had traversed 
overy causeway of risk, sounded every well of possibil- 
ity. To a young girl of the higher class in Venice, a 
night trip, uncavaliered, held elements of grave peril. 
Discovery spelled lasting disgrace perhaps, certainly the 
anger of her father. All this she was ready to hazard. 
But beyond was the looming probability that she could 
not find the object of her search after all. However, it 
was a chance, and fear, with another sentiment that she 
did not analyze, impelled her to take it. 

It was an easy task to win Tita, for he would have de- 
nied her nothing. To him, however, she told only a 
part of the truth — ^that she wished once to see the Pi- 
azza by night. Only an hour in the music and lights in 
his care, and then quick and safe return to the Palazzo 
Albrizzi. The house servants she could answer for. 
Who would be the wiser ? 

So, a little while after Gordon had been set down 
that night at the Molo, another gondola, lampless and 
with drawn tenda, stole swiftly to a side landing, and 
( 208 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


20& 


Teresa, closely veiled, with Tita ty her side, stepped 
into the square, beneath the flare of its flambeaux, into 
its currents of eddying maskers where the white fazzioli 
of the lower orders mingled with the rich costumes of 
patricians, all alike stung by the tarantula of gaiety: 
a flashing sea of motion and color surging endlessly be- 
neath a sky alive with winged spots of gray and black — 
the countless pigeons that circled there undisturbed. 

She had chosen the Piazza after much deliberation. 
It was the last night of the carnival, when all the world 
of Venice was on the streets. At the new Fenice Thea- 
ter the latest opera of Eossinf s was playing, and there 
was the ball of the Cavalchina, the final throb before 
the dropping of the pall of Lent. The sadness in Gor- 
don’s face and speech, she felt, had no part in these 
things. She felt instinctively that he would be spec- 
tator rather than actor, would choose the open air of 
the square rather than the indoors. The danger she 
feared for him would not seek him in a crowd ; it would 
lurk in some silent byway and strike unseen. The 
thought made her tremble as she peered about her. 

The center of the Piazza was a pool, fed and emptied 
by three streams of people : one flowing under the clock- 
tower with its blue and gold dial and bronze figures, 
one through the west entrance under the Bocca di 
Piazza, and still another rounding the Doges’ Palace 
and meeting the thronged Eiva. It was on the fringe of 
this second stream that she saw him, when the hour wa& 
almost ended. He was standing in the shadow of the 
pillars, watching, she thought, yet abstracted. With a 
whispered word to Tita she ran and touched the move- 
less figure on the arm. 


'210 


THE CASTAWAY 


Gordon turned instantly, and turning, spoke her name 
half-aloud. ^^Teresa !” The utterance was almost auto- 
matic, the lips, startled, voicing the word that was in his 
mind at the moment. 

She thought he recognized her through the veil, and 
answered with a cry expressing at one time her relief 
at finding him, and a quick delight that thrilled her at 
the sound of her name on his lips. Many things had 
wrought together to produce this new miracle of glad- 
ness. The strangeness and romance of their first meet- 
ing, the tragedy of loneliness she had guessed in the 
scene at the shop, her dread and the physical risk en- 
tailed in her adventure of this night, all had combined 
with cunning alchemy. When he spoke she forgot to be 
surprised that he had called her by name, forgot that she 
did not know his, forgot everything save his presence 
and her errand. 

He leaned forward, breathing deeply. It was she! 
She put her veil aside quickly — ^her eyes were like 
sapphire stones I — ^and told him hurriedly of the threat 
she had heard, of her dread, all in a rush of sentences 
incoherent and unstudied. 

^^And so you came to warn me ?” 

^^He would do it. Signore ! Ah, I saw his face when 
he said it. You must be guarded! You must not go 
abroad alone V’ 

His mind was busy. How much she had jeopardized 
fo reach him in that fancied danger! She, in Venice, 
a young girl of noble rank, with no escort save a gondo- 
lier ! Eisk enough for her in any case ; what an endur- 
ing calamity if she should be seen and recognized there, 
with him! 


THE CASTAWAT 


211 


He led her back between the pillars, put out bis band 
and drew the veil again across her face, speaking grave- 
ly and gently: 

^‘What you have done is a brave and noble thing ; one 
I shall be glad of always. It was no less courageous, 
nor am I less grateful, though what you heard was a 
mistake. Little Pasquale is not dead. I spoke with the 
surgeon here less than a haK-hour ago. He had just 
come from the piazzetta. The child will recover.^^ 

^^Oh, thank God!’^ she breathed. She clasped her 
hands in very abandonment. ^‘^The blessed Virgin has 
heard me !” 

His heart seemed suddenly to cease beating. The ex- 
clamation was a revelation far deeper than she divined. 
It was not joy at the life of the child that was deepest 
in it — it was something else: a great relief for him! 
He felt the blood tingle to his finger-tips. Only one 
emotion could speak in such an accent — only one ! 

With an uncontrollable impulse he leaned to her and 
clasped both her hands. 

^^ou cared, Teresa, he said, ^^ou risked so much 
— ^for me?^^ 

He had spoken her name again. Again she felt the 
stab of that quivering spear of gladness. Her fingers 
fluttered in his. 

^‘Yes — ^yes!^’ she whispered. The shouts, the music, 
the surge and laughter around, faded. She felt herself, 
unafraid, drifting on a sea of unplummetted depths. 

A shock of fright brought her to herself. A man 
bent and dressed richly, with an affectation of youth, was 
passing, attended by a servant. As they approached, 
the keen-eyed servitor had pointed out Gordon. ^Yhat 


212 


THE CASTAWAY 


is the evil Englishman, Excellence, of whom you have 
heard/^ he had said, and the old noble he led had set his 
keen eyes on the other with a chuckling relish. 

Teresa, in the momentary pause they made, hardly 
repressed a cry, for that moment discovery seemed to her 
imminent. The old man was the Count Guiccioli — he 
who had leaned that afternoon from the palazzo balcony. 
Her pulses leaped to panic. She felt as if that sharp 
gaze must go through the veil, and pressed closer to 
Gordon. 

But master and servant passed on, and her fear faint- 
ed out. 

The man beside her had felt that quick pressure, and 
instinctively the touch of his arm reassured her, though 
he had not surmised her alarm. In that instant Gordon 
had been thinking like lightning. A temptation had 
sprung full-statured before him. In a flash he had 
read the dawning secret behind those eyes, the sweet un- 
spoken things beneath those trembling lips crimson- 
soft as poppy leaves. To possess this heart for his own ! 
Hot to tell her who he was — ^not yet, when her purity 
would shrink — ^to nurture this budding regard with 
meetings like this, stolen from fate — to cherish it till 
it burst into flower for him, all engrossing, supreme! 
To make this love, fluttering to him unsought in the 
purlieus of his souks despair, his solace and his sanctu- 
ary ! 

Coincidence grappled with him — a stealthy persua- 
sion. In the crisis of his madness, when at Geneva he 
had cursed every good thing, her pictured face had 
sought him out to go with him. Into the nadir of his 
degradation there in Venice it had dropped like a fall- 


THE CASTAWAZ 


213 


ing star to call him to himself. Fate had led him to 
her in the woods of La Mira — ^had brought them both 
face to face at the shop in the piazzetta — and now had 
led her to him again here in the midst of the maskers. 
It was Kismet ! 

did not think there was more than one in all the 
world who would have done what you have to-night!’^ 
he said; ^^that would have cared if I lived or died! 
Why do you care 

^‘Ah!’^ she answered hurriedly. ^Ts there one who 
would not ? I do not know why. One does not reason 
of such things. One feels. I know I have cared — ever 
since that morning in the wood, when you found the 
book, when I gave you the prayer 

He started, releasing her hands. ^'Intercede and ob^ 
tain for me of thy. Son, our Lord, this grace T It 
seemed to come to him from the air, a demoniac echo to 
his desire. His breath choked him. She had prayed 
for him, purely, unselfishly. How should he requite? 
To-night, for his sake she had risked reputation. How 
did he purpose to repay? Would not the doing of 
this thing sink him a thousand black leagues ^ below the 
sky she breathed? No matter how much she might 
come to love, could it recompense for what he would 
take away? Between those two lay a gulf as deep 
as that which stretched between cool water and a tor- 
tured Dives. What had he, George Gordon, dragging 
the chain and ball of a life sentence of despair, to do 
with her in her purity ? He yearned for her because she 
was an immaculate thing; because she reincarnated for 
him all the white, unspotted ideals that he had thrown 


214 


THE CASTAWAY 


away, that he longed to touch again. It was the devil 
tempting in the plea of an angel! 

The mist fell from his eyes. 

^^Child!^^ he said. ^^What you have done to-night I 
can never repay. I shall remember it until I die. But 
I am not worthy of your thought — ^not worthy of a 
single throb of that heart of yours 1^^ 

She shook her head protesting. 

^^That cannot be true,^^ she contended. ^^But if it 
were. Signore, one cannot say T will,^ or T will not care’ 
when one chooses.” Her tone was naive, and arch with 
a smiling, shy rebellion. 

‘‘Listen,” he went on. “Do not think me jesting. 
What I say now I say because I must. I want you to 
promise me you will do something — something only for 
your good, I swear that !” 

The smile faded from her lips, chilled by his earnest- 
ness. 

“When you go from here you must forget that day at 
La Mira, forget that you came to-night — ^that we have 
ever met ! Will you promise this ?” 

Her whole mind was a puzzled question now. Did he 
mean she should see him no more? Was he quitting 
Venice? The thought came like a pang. But to forget ! 
Could she if she would ? Why did he say it was for her 
good? A fear, formless and vague, ran through her. 

“Why do you ask that. Signore ?” 

He turned his face away. It was so much harder than 
he thought. Must he tell her who he was? Could he 
not carry with him this one memory? Must he drink 
this cup of abnegation to its last dregs ? The very kind- 
ness of silence would be cruelty for her ! The seed fate 


THE CASTAWAY 


215 


had sown, watered by mystery, would germinate in 
thorns ! He must tell her — tell her now ! 

The press of maskers flooding the square, circled 
nearer, and she drew close. Her hand from under her 
cloak, found his own, suddenly fearful, feeling bold 
looks upon them. 

"'Bravo la Fornarinar rose a jeering cry. An ex- 
clamation broke from Gordon’s lips. A woman had 
burst from the throng like a beautiful embodied 
storm. Teresa shrank with a sob of dismay at the vision 
of flashing black eyes and dark hair streaming across 
jealous brows. 

The crowd laughed. 

Ht is VInglese malignor said a voice. 

Evading Gordon’s arm, with a spring like a tiger’s, 
the infuriate flgure reached the girl, snatching at the 
veil. 

‘^So he prefers you for his donna T she sneered sav- 
agely. ^‘Let us see, white face !” 

The rent gauze dropped to the ground. 

Sudden stillness fell. The jests and jeers hushed. 
Teresa stood motionless, her features frozen to sculp- 
ture; a passing cloud had slipped from the moon, and 
the silvery light above and behind her caught and 
tangled to a glistening aureole in her amber hair that 
fell in a mist about her shoulders. The illusion of a 
halo was instant and awe-inspiring. More than one, 
gazing, made the sign of the cross. 

There was a cry — the Fornarina had flung herself 
on her knees on the flagging. A stir came from the 
crowd. 

Ulnglese maligno! For the girl who stood so 


S16 


THE CASTAWAY 


moveless, the exclamation had blotted joy from the uni- 
verse. It was as though all terrors gripped her bodily 
in a molten midnight. Dreams, faiths, prayer, and 
tender things unguessed, seemed to be shrivelling in her. 
She shivered, put out her hands and wavered on her 
feet. 

''Dior she said in a low voice. ^TTou, the wicked 
milord P 

Gordon, in aching misery, stretched out his arms 
toward her, though he saw her eyes were closed, with 
a broken word that was lost in a tumult, as a gigantic 
form plowed through the circle, a form from whose 
rush maskers fell away like tenpins. 

It was Tita, enraged, bull-like. He gathered the 
crumpling, veilless figure in his arms, thrust his burly 
shoulder against the crowd and bore her quickly to the 
water-stairs where lay the dark gondola. 

He set her on the cushions and plied the oar till it 
smoked in its socket. 

The bright canals fled by — she had not moved. By 
darker passages he went now and very slowly, threading 
stagnant unlighted alleys. The way opened out, a swish 
of trailing tendrils swept across the oar — they were un- 
der a vine-trellised bridge. The lampless gondola crept 
along the wall, stole with sudden swiftness across a 
patch of moonbeams and darted into the shadowy water- 
* gate. 

Tita had thought the canal quite deserted. But be- 
yond the moonlight another craft had been drowsing 
by. The old man under its tenda had been musing on 
the loveliness of a girl within those walls whom he 
should soon possess, and with her a dowry, set aside at 



THE ILLUSION OF A HALO WAS INSTANT AND AWE-INSPIRING, p. 




THE CASTAWAY 


217 


her birth, which the waning fortunes of her family had 
preserved intact. He saw the dark bulk shoot into the 
gilded water-gate and peered out. 

‘^What was that?” he demanded, 
gondola, surely. Excellence.” 

Garden water-gates seldom swung in Venice at night. 
For a moment he watched. ^^Some servant’s errand,” 
he reflected, and leaned back on the cushions. 

In the orchid-scented garden, Tita’s brawny arms 
lifted Teresa out and set her upon the marble steps. 
He was thinking of the Englishman. 

*'Illustrissimar he whispered. ^'Shall I kill him?” 

Then something broke in Teresa’s breast. She clasped 
the broad neck, sobbing: 

‘^Ho, no, Tita ! Dear Tita ! Hot that ! I would rather 
die myself!” 


CHAPTER XXX 


THE PEACE OF PADRE SOMALIAN’ 

All night Gordon’s gondola floated over the dark 
lagoon. All night the star-silvered dip of the oar broke 
into ripples the glassy surface. All night Gordon sat 
silent, gazing out across the low islands that barred the 
sea. 

Something had touched his life which, sooner met, 
might have made existence a boon. A woman’s soul had 
roused him — ^but only to a rayless memory of what 
burned and rankled, as the touch of a hand wakes a 
prisoner from nightly lethargy to a sense of bolt and 
chain. 

Lines from his poem which she loved — which had 
called forth her prayer — recurred to him: 

“A light broke in upon my brain, — 

It was the carol of a bird; 

It ceased, and then it came again. 

The sweetest song ear ever heard; 

And mine was thankful till my eyes 
Ran over with the glad surprise. 

And they that moment could not see 
I was the mate of misery; 

But then by dull degrees came back 
My senses to their wonted track, 

I saw the dungeon walls and floor 
Close slowly round me as before.” 

( 218 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


219 


So she had come and gone, and his hands touched 
Only walls of adamant, his ears heard only an echo roll- 
ing across blank infinities ! 

The moon sank. The great, linked lamps of the heav- 
ens burned brighter, faded at length, and a breath of 
sea-breeze, harbinger of the dawn, struck coldly on his 
cheek. Night became soft twilight, twilight grew to 
warm amethyst. Little milky clouds dappled the 
zenith, slowly suffused by a flush of rose that grew to 
vivid splendor gray-streaked, as the sun’s climbing edge 
touched the humid horizon. 

The occupant of the gondola stirred and looked about 
him. The air was full of mewing swallows, and a sandy 
island lay before him from which rose clumps of foli- 
age and the dim outlines of brown stone walls, gilded 
by the growing light. The gondolier’s voice broke the 
long silence; 

^Tt is the Armenian monastery of Saint Lazarus, Ex- 
cellence.” 

The island lay lapped in quiet. Not a sound or 
movement intrenched upon its peace. Only the swal- 
lows circled shrilly about slim bell-towers, lifting like 
fingers pointing silently. A narrow causeway through 
an encircling dike led to the wharf, and beyond, by a 
gate, to an orchard where gnarled fruit-trees sniffed the 
salt air. From a chimney at one side a strand of smoke 
sheered slenderly. 

Gordon drew a long breath. ^Tut me ashore,” he 
said. 

The gondola shot alongside the tiny wharf, and he 
stepped on to its stone flags. He stood silent a moment, 
feeling the calm upon him like a tangible hand. Far to 


220 


THE CASTAWAY 


the north, half a league’s distance, glowing through the 
bluish winter haze, shone the towers and domes of 
Venice, a city of white and violet, vague and unsub- 
stantial as a dream, a field of iris painted upon a cloud. 

^^Go back to the city.” 

The servant was startled. ^^And leave you. Excel- 
lence ?” 

‘^Yes, I shall send when I need you.” 

The boatman leaned anxiously on his oar. ‘^When 
they question. Excellence?” 

^^Tell no one but Fletcher where I am. Say to him it 
is my wish that he shall not leave the palazzo.” 

He watched the gondola glide away over the lighten- 
ing waters, till it was only a spot on the dimpling la- 
goon. He took a black phial from his pocket and threw 
it far out into the water. Then he turned his gaze and 
walked up the wharf toward the monastery, still sound- 
less and asleep. 

At the corner of the sea-wall, the stone had been hol- 
lowed with the chisel into a niche, in which, its face 
turned seaward, stood a small leaden image of the Vir- 
gin. He noted it curiously, with the same sensation of 
the unartificial he had felt at sight of the wooden shrine 
at La Mira. And yet with all its primitive simplicity, 
what a chasm between such a concrete embodiment of a 
personal guardianship and that agnostic altar his youth 
had erected the unknown God” ! 

He looked up and saw a figure near him. 

A man of venerable look stood there, bareheaded, 
with a wide gray beard which swept upon his coarse 
dark robe. His eyes were deep and pleasant, and his 


THE CASTAWAY 


221 


conntenance spiritual, gracious and reserved. An open 
gate in the wall showed the way he had come. 

For a moment neither spoke. The lucent gaze con- 
fronting him seemed to Gordon to possess a strange fa- 
miliarity: it was the same expression of unworldly sin- 
cerity that had shone in those London days from Dal- 
las’ face. 

‘^What do you seek, my son?” 

Perhaps the friar had already had time to study the 
visitor. Perchance the clear scrutiny had read some- 
thing beneath that cryptic look bent upon the shrine. 
What did he not seek, indeed ! 

WLen Gordon answered it was simply, in Italian as 
direct as the other’s question. 

^^The peace of your walls and fields drew me. Padre, 
By your leave, I would rest a while here.” 

The friar’s look had not wavered. Contemplation 
teaches one much. It was easy to read the lines of dissi- 
pation, of evil indulgence, that marked the white face 
before him ; but the padre saw further to the soul-sick- 
ness beneath. 

^^We are Armenians, Signore,” he proffered, ^^a com- 
munity of students, who have poor entertainment; but 
to such as we have, the stranger is welcome. He who 
comes to us stays without question and fares forth again 
at his own will.” 

As he spoke, a bell’s clear, chilly chime rose from 
somewhere within the walls. At the note the padre 
turned, bowed his knee before the leaden Virgin, and 
rising, with arm raised toward the lagoon, blessed the 
waters and the land. Then he held out his hand to 
Gordon. 


222 


THE CASTAWAY 


am Padre Sukias Somalian/^ he said. will go 
and inform the prior. I will call you presently 

He disappeared through the wall-gate. 

Gordon’s eyes, following him, saw the worn motto 
deeply cut in the stone above it. 

^^0 Solitudo, sola Beatitudof* 

Was it solitude that had brought that look of utter 
peace to the friar’s face? Or was it rather the belief 
that made him bow before the niche yonder ? 

His gaze wandered back to the shrine. Prayer to him 
was a fetish — a plastic rigmarole of symbols and for- 
mulae — ^the modern evolution of the pre-Adamite, an- 
thropomorphic superstition. It was far more than that 
to the friar. He knelt each day to that little leaden 
image. And before such an image she, Teresa, whose 
pure soul had been wounded last night, had laid that 
written petition. 

A singular look stole to his face, half -quizzical, half- 
wistful. He took a leaf of paper from his pocket. He 
hesitated a moment, folding and unfolding it. He 
glanced toward the gate. 

Then he went to the niche, stooped and lifted one of 
the loose flat stones that formed the base on which the 
image rested. He brushed away the sand with his hand, 
put the paper in the space and replaced the stone over 
it. 

As he stood upright, a voice called to him from the 
gate. It was the padre, and he turned and followed 
him in. 


CHAPTER XXXI 


At the feet of our lady of sorrows 

George Gordon, at the monastery of San Lazzarro, 
looked out of washed eyes upon an altered condition. 
He was conscious of new strength and new weaknesses. 
The man, emerging from the slough of those months of 
lawless impulses and ungoverned recklessnesses, had 
found no gradual rejuvenation. After weeks of remorse, 
temptation had flung itself upon him full armed. The 
memory of a prayer had vanquished it. In that instant 
of moral resistance, conscience had been reborn. It was 
the sharp sword dividing forever past from present. 
The past of debauchery was henceforth impossible to 
him. What future was there ? He had not only to bear 
unnumbed the despair he had tried to drown, but an 
anguish born of the newer yesterday. 

The wholesome daily life of the friars, their homely 
occupations and studies, varied by little more than ma- 
tutinal visits of fish-boats of the lagoon, aided him in- 
sensibly. His thought needed something craggy to 
break upon and he found it in the Armenian language 
which he studied under the tutelage of Padre Somalian, 
aiding the friar in turning into its rugged structure 
the sonorous periods of ^Taradise Lost.’^ 

( 223 ) 


224 


THE CASTAWAY 


But from time to time, in this routine, a searing 
memory would recur and he would see in shifting chi- 
aroscuro, the scene on the Piazza San Marco : the faces 
of the maskers, the slight, shrinking form of Teresa, 
the angry dark eyes of the Fornarina, a hand snatch- 
ing at a veil — ^then the streaming moonlight tangling 
to a halo about a girPs shocked face so innocently 
touched with horror, a face that would always be dis- 
tinct to him! 

If he could have spared her the indignity of that one 
coarse scene! If he could only have told her himself,, 
and gently! But even that. Fate had denied him — 
the dogging Nemesis that stalked him always ! But for 
its decree, they had not met that night. He would 
have remained in her mind as she had seen him by the 
side of little Pasquale — a kindly shadow, a mystery 
beckoning her sympathy, then haply forgot. Now she 
would remember him always. Not as the wretched and 
misunderstood being for whom she had prayed at La 
Mira, but with shrinking and self-reproach, as a veri- 
table agency of evil — ^the true milord malignOj who 
had bought her interest with the spurious coin of hy- 
pocrisy. So his tormented thought raced out along the 
barren grooves of surmise. 

As he walked under the orchard’s rosy roof, the prior 
called to him: 

^^A wedding party is coming to the south landing,” 
he said. ^^Our monastery is fortunate this month. This 
is the third.” 

Gordon looked. There, rounding the sea-wall, was 
a procession of gondolas, decked superbly, the foremost 
draped wholly in white and trailing bright streamers 


THE CASTAWAY 


225 


in the water, like some great queen bird leading a covey 
of soberer plumage. By the richness of the banners 
and embroidered tenda, it was the cortege of some noble 
bridal. As he gazed, the faint music of stringed instru- 
ments drifted across the walls. 

Gathering closer the coarse brown monastery robe he 
had thrown about him, Gordon followed the padre 
through the garden to the further entrance, where the 
brethren, girdled and cowled, were drawn up, a benign 
row. The bride would wait among the ladies on the 
beach, since beyond that portal no woman’s foot must 
go* the bridegroom would enter, to leave his gifts and 
to drink a glass of home-pressed violet-scented wine in 
the great hall. 

Gordon paused a little way from the water-stairs and 
looked down over the low wall at the white gondola. 
One day, he mused, Teresa would marry — some noble 
like this no doubt, for she had rank and station — one 
whom she would love as she might have loved him. 
Perhaps she would celebrate her marriage in the Vene- 
tian way, come in a gondola procession maybe to this 
very monastery, never guessing that he once had been 
within it! In what comer of the world would he be 
then? 

Under the edge of the tenda he could see the shim- 
mering wedding-gown of the bride, cloth of gold heavy 
with seed pearls. The gentlemen had already entered 
the close. As he gazed, the gondola swung round and 
he caught a fleeting glimpse of her face. 

^^Teresa !” he gasped, and his hand clutched the wall. 

She — so soon! A sudden pain, not vague but defi- 
nite, seized him. She had not cared, then. Her heart 


•226 


THE CASTAWAY 


had not suffered, after all ! On that night, when she had 
swayed forward into the gondolier’s arms, it had been 
only horror at her discovery, not a nearer grief ! What 
for that quivering instant he had thought he read in 
her exclamation had not been there. Fool ! To think 
his face could have drawn her for an hour! Doubly 
fool to sorrow for her hurt ! Better so. She must not 
see him ; no reminder of shame and affront should mar 
this day for her. 

He turned, crossed the garden, opened the wall-gate 
and came out by the niched shrine upon the shore path 
which semi-circled the monastery. 

A gust of self-raillery shook him. Inside, the friars 
were gravely drinking a health to the bride, in cups 
kept burnished for the purpose, made of pure gold. He, 
though only a guest, should be among them in robe and 
girdle to cheer these nuptials ! He had drunk many a 
bumper in such costume in the old Newstead days, 
with Sheridan and Tom Moore ! 

The bitter laugh died on his lips. Why should he 
remember so well? In such a gabardine he had drunk 
the toast Annabel had heard, the night he had asked 
her to marry him. And he had drunk it from a death’s- 
head! The emblem, truly enough, had typified the 
tragedy marriage was to be to him ! 

He leaned forward, resting his forehead against the 
mossed stone, as if its coolness might allay the fever 
that held him. Would marriage have meant such for 
him if the words that had bound him to Annabel had 
linked him to a heart like Teresa’s, of fire and snow, of 
simple faith, of tenderness and charity? If he could 
have loved one like her ! 


THE CASTAWAY 


227 


He had no knowledge of how long he stood there. He 
was recalled by a voice from the path behind him — ^be- 
tween him and the gate, his only way of escape — a voice 
that held him spellbound. 

^Tather, give me your blessing !” 

With an overmastering sense of the fatality that had 
beckoned her to the lagoon path at just this moment to 
mistake him for one of the padres, he turned slowly. 
She was kneeling, the exquisite fabric of her dress 
sweeping the moist shingle, her eyes on the ground, 
awaiting the sign. 

He reached out his hand with a hoarse cry: 

^^Hot that! Teresa! It is I — I — who should kneel 
to you I” 

The words broke from him at sight of her bent face, 
not as a bride’s should be, but weary and listless. Un- 
derneath the cry was a quick thrill of triumph. Though 
she was that day another man’s wife, yet she had suf- 
fered! But the thrill died in a pang of reproach. If 
she did care, better the harshest thought of him now ! 

She had sprung to her feet in passionate amaze. 

^^You!” she exclaimed; ^^ah, you!” 

In the exclamation there was a great revulsion and 
greater joy. Her gaze swept his pallid features, his 
costume — her sick imagination had pictured him in 
scenes of ribaldry, with evil companions! She began 
to murmur broken sentences: 

have wronged you ! That night on the square — it 
was not the you that 1 had known ! You had tried to 
leave that life behind— the past that had given you that 
name! You are not what they say, — ^not now! Hot 
now !” 


228 


THE CASTAWAY 


He stopped her with a gesture. 

^Tt is I who have wronged you,” he said in a voice 
hard from repression. ^^Ho not judge me by this robe ; 
it means less than nothing. I am here by the veriest ac- 
cident. Hot for penance or shriving.” 

For an instant she recoiled, instinct groping in the 
maze of doubt. What was he, erring angel or masque- 
rading devil ? It was the question she had cried to her- 
self all this time, blindly, passionately, her judgment 
all astray — ^the query that silence had at last answered 
with the conviction in which her long-planned marriage 
had seemed as acceptable a fate as any. How her soul, 
wavering anew, spoke its agony in a direct appeal : 

^^Tell me ! tell me the truth !” she pleaded piteously, 
have suffered so since that night. I have not known 
— ^how could I know ? — what to think. I believed what 
you said at La Mira, every word! And it is not your 
past I think of now; it is only what you were that very 
hour and since, — and what you are to-day. Was it only 
a play — to make me sorry ? Did you pretend it all ?” 

^Teresa!” he entreated. 

^^You said that night that I must forget we had ever 
met. Did that mean you merely pitied and spared me ? 
That you are still to be — all that Venice says ?” 

^Tt was what I had been that counted I” 

^'Ho, no!” she protested. ^^CanT you see that does 
not matter to me now ? It is only what you were then 
that counts to me ! Your voice, your eyes, what you 
said — ^you made me care ! Was it all a lie ?” 

He felt his heart contract a : this visible suffering 
whose root was so unselfish a desire. His resolve crum- 
bled. 


THE CASTAWAY 


239 


“Teresa/^ he said in a tone as strained as her own, 
^Vhatever of evil I have done, has not been since I 
have known you. You have waked something in me 
that would not sleep again. It was this you saw and 
heard and felt. I could not hide it. It has stayed with 
me ever since ! It will always be with me now, whether 
I will or no. I did come here by accident. But I have 
stayed because the past — Venice and my life there — is 
hateful to me! It has been so since that morning at 
La Mira 1” 

^‘^Oh 1” she breathed, ^Then when you asked me for 
the prayer — ^you did not — ^you meant — 

^Tt was because it was almost the only unselfish and 
unworldly thing I had ever known. Because it was a 
thought for the scorned and unshriven; because of the 
very hurt it gave ; because it was a prayer of yours — ^f or 
me !” 

While he spoke, a great gladness illumined her face, 
^^Have you kept it?” 

He turned from her instinctively to the shrine, his 
hand outstretched to raise the flat stone. But as sud- 
denly he paused. He had placed it there in a half-sar- 
donic mockery ; not with the pure faith she would infer 
from the action. He could not stand in a false light 
before her. 

He let the stone fall back into its place. 

As he turned again to answer, he confronted two 
figures coming through the gateway a few paces off. 
One was an old man, his bent form dressed gaily. The 
other was Padre Somalian. The latter, in advance, had 
alone seen the lifted stone. 

Both, however, saw the emotion in the two faces be- 


230 


THE CASTAWAY 


fore them. The padre stood still ; the other sprang for- 
ward, his posture instinct with an unhealthy passion, 
his piercing eyes on the pair with evil inquiry. 

The attitude of ownership was unmistakable. Gordon 
felt his veins clog with ice. This senile magnifico 
Teresa’s husband ! This — a, coerced Venetian mating 
of name, of rank, of lands alone — for her ? The 
sight smote him painfully, yet with a strange, bitter 
comfort. 

There was even more in the old noble’s look than 
Gordon guessed: more than anger at her presence here, 
this young bride of his, apart from the gondolas. He 
had recognized the man in the monk’s robe. His voice 
rose in a snarl: 

^^Unbaptized son of a dog ! What is he doing on holy 
ground ?” He pointed his stick at Gordon. ^^The aban- 
doned of Venice! Has not his past fame penetrated 
here. Padre, that you lend him asylum? Call my gon- 
doliers and I will have him flung into the lagoon 1” 

The friar stood transfixed, shocked and pained. 
Never since he had met Gordon on that very spot at 
sunrise, had he asked even his name. Suppose the 
stranger were all the other said. What difference should 
it make? The fixed habit of the monk answered: 

^^What he has been is of no question here.” 

The grandee sneered at the padre’s answer. 

^^You left the gondola, to be sure, to pray,” he said 
to Teresa, then turned to Gordon who waited in con- 
strained quiet: ^^Wolf in sheep’s clothing! Bid you 
come for the same purpose?” 

Teresa felt in Gordon’s silence a control that stilled 
her own violence of feeling. Her husband saw her 


THE CASTAWAY 


231 


glance and a maniacal suspicion darted like lava 
through his brain. If this meeting were planned, they 
had met before — she and this maligno whom he had 
seen on the Piazza San Marco. Two hectic spots sprang 
into his sallow cheeks. A woman’s veiled form had 
stood by this man then! He remembered the derisive 
story with which the caffes had rung the next day. 
That same night the unlighted gondola had crept 
through the water-gate into the garden of the Palazzo 
Alhrizzi! 

He leaped forward and gripped Teresa’s wrist with 
shaking fingers, as the padre opened his mouth to speak. 
He leaned and whispered words into her ear — words 
that, beside himself as he was, he did not choose that 
the friar should hear. 

The hazard told. Her color faded. A startled look 
sped to her eyes. He knew that she had met Gordon at 
night on the square ! She read monstrous conclusions 
in the gaze that held her. Innocent as that errand had 
been, he would never believe it! A terror struck her 
cold. This old man who possessed her, that instant 
ceased to be an object of tolerance and became an active 
horror, baleful, secretive and cruel. She stood still, 
trembling. 

The padre had been nonplussed at the quick move- 
ment and its result. Gordon could not surmise what 
the whispered words had been, but at Teresa’s paleness 
he felt his muscles grow rigid. 

To her accuser her agitation meant but one thing. 
He released her wrist with a cracked laugh, distempered 
jealousy convulsing his features. He hissed one word 
at her — ^^Wanton!” 


232 


THE CASTAWAY 


The syllables were live coals flung upon her breast. 
She cried out and put her hands to her ears as if to shut 
out the sound. 

At that epithet and her cry, Gordon’s countenance 
turned livid. His fingers hardened to steel. The air 
swam red. But the girl divined; she sprang before 
him and laid her fingers on his arm. His hands dropped 
to his sides; he remembered suddenly that his antago- 
nist was aged, decrepit. What had he been about to do ? 

For one heart-beat Teresa held Gordon’s glance. 
When she faced her distraught husband, her eyes were 
like blue-tempered metal. Those weeks of baffled quest 
had been slipping the leash of girlhood. That one word 
had left hei- all a woman. Her lips were set, and resent- 
ment had drenched her cheeks with vivid color. 

^‘"Signore,” she said, would to God it were still 
yesterday !” 

She turned, and went proudly down the path by 
which she had come. 

The old man had not moved. How he raised his stick 
and struck Gordon with it across the brow. A white 
mark sprang where it fell, but the other did not lift his 
hand. Then Teresa’s husband, with an imprecation, 
spat on the ground at the friar’s feet and followed her 
toward the gondolas. 

The whole scene had been breathless and fate-like. 
To the padre, it was a flurry of hellish passions loosed 
from the pit. The storm past, still shocked from the 
violence of its impact, his mind wrestled with a doubt. 
His first glance at the faces of the^man and the woman, 
as he emerged from the gate, had been full of sugges- 
tion. They had not seemed to spell guilt, yet could he 


THE CASTAWAY 


233 


tell? What had been the husband’s whispered charge? 
Was the bearing of the woman, which seemed to mirror 
innocence, really one of guile? The man here before 
him, accused of what specious crimes he could only 
guess ! Why had he come to the monastery ? Had there 
been, indeed, more than chance in this encounter at the 
shrine ? 

He looked at Gordon, but the latter, staring out with 
a gaze viewless and set across the lagoon, seemed uncon- 
scious of the scrutiny. ^^Be not forgetful to entertain 
strangers !” That had been the monastery’s creed. Aye, 
but if it should be entertaining an angel of evil un- 
awares? He thought of the lifted stone — the man’s 
hand had just now dropped it back into place at his ap- 
proach. He remembered that when he called Gordon 
from the gate on the morning of his coming, he had seen 
him bending over the shrine. The fact seemed to dis- 
close significance. Had this stranger used that holy 
emblem to further a clandestine and sinful tryst? Had 
he hidden an endearing message there for the wife to 
find to-day if he should be observed ? 

Lines of sternness sharpened the friar’s features. He 
strode forward, caught up the stone and lifted the' 
folded paper. 

The sternness smoothed out as he read the simple 
penned sentences, and a singular look crept to his face. 
It was more than contrition; it was the self -accusatory 
sorrow of a mind to whom uncharity is a heinous sin be- 
fore high Heaveij. 

He turned, flushing painfully. Gordon’s back was 
still toward him. 

Then the padre laid the paper gently back in its place, 


234 


THE CASTAWAY 


reset the stone over it, and silently, with bowed head en- 
tered the gate. 

That night there were two who did not close eye in 
the monastery of San Lazzarro. One was Padre Soma- 
lian, who prayed in penance. The other was a stranger 
who walked the stone floor of his chamber, the prey to 
an overmastering emotion. 

That scene on the path, like a lightning flash in a 
dark night, had shown Gordon his own heart. He knew 
now that a force stronger even than his despair had been 
at work in him without his knowledge. A woman^s face 
cried to him beyond all gainsaying. Teresa^s voice 
sounded in every lurch of wind against the sea-wall — ^in 
every wave, that beat like a passing bell upon the mar- 
gin-stones. 

Far, far deeper than the burn of the white welt on 
his forehead throbbed and thrilled a bitter-sweet mis- 
ery. In spite of his desire, he had brought shame and 
agony upon her — and whether for good or ill, he loved 
her ! 


CHAPTEE XXXII 


THE RESTEAIHIITG HAND 

An east wind blew from the Adriatic. It churned 
the shadow lagoon to an ashen yeast of fury, hurled 
churlish waves against the sand-reef of the Lido and 
drove fleering rain-gusts over the lonely canals and de- 
serted squares of Venice to drench the baffled and be- 
draggled pigeons huddled under the columns of the 
Boges^ Palace. It beat down the early blossoms in the 
garden of the Palazzo Albrizzi till they lay broken and 
sodden about the arbor and the wet stone benches. It 
charged against the closed shutters of the Palazzo Mo- 
cenigo, where Fletcher, obedient though foreboding, 
awaited the return of his master. The sky was piled 
with dreary portents, clouds titanic, unmixed, like ava- 
lanches of gray falling cliffs, and beneath it Venice lay 
as ghostly and as gray, all its miracle hues gone lack- 
luster, its glories palled, its whole face pallid and 
corpse-like. 

In the old monastery of San Lazzarro, in the bare 
white- washed room used as a library, with wide windows 
fronting the sea, Gordon sat bending over a table. He 
had been trying to write, but could not for the thoughts 
that flocked between him and the paper. 

( 235 ) 


236 


THE CASTAWAY 


They were thoughts of Teresa, of what he had inno- 
cently brought upon her. To save her pain he would 
himself have gone through immeasurable miseries, but 
no pang of his could lighten hers, or ward the Jealous 
fury that might sting and embitter her life. Where was 
she? Behind some cold palazzo walls of Venice, suffer- 
ing through him? He knew not even her name now. 
Should they never meet again ? 

She loved him. When and how she had crossed that 
indistinguishable frontier mattered nothing. The fact 
remained. When had he ever been loved before, he 
thought. Hot Lady Caroline Lamb; hers was an aber- 
rant fancy, an orchid bred of a hothouse life in London. 
Hot Annabel, his wife; she had loved the commiseration 
of her world more than she loved him. Hot Jane Cler- 
mont — ^he shuddered as he thought of her. For he 
knew that not for one ephemeral moment of that reck- 
less companionship had a real love furnished extenua- 
tion. 

^^How,” he told himself, who could not love when 
I might, may not when I can. Yet in spite of the black 
past that bars my life from such as Teresa’s — I love 
her! In spite of all — ^though for both of us it is an 
impossible condition, impossible then since I was chained 
to a marriage in England, doubly impossible now since 
she is bound by a marriage here. I love her and she 
loves me! And our love can be only what the waves 
of hell were to Tantalus !” 

He struck the littered sheets of paper with his hand, 
as a heavier gust of wet wind rattled the casement. 
""Darkness and despair !” he said aloud. ""That is all my 
pen can paint now !” 


THE CASTAWAY 


237 


A door opened and Padre Somalian entered. 

The friar surveyed the scene of tempest from the 
window a moment in silence ; then approached the table 
and sat down. 

‘Y'ou are at work, my son?^^ he inquired in English. 

The tone was mild as a child^s. Since his penance 
after that scene by the shrine, the eye of the padre had 
seen truer. But he had asked the man before him noth- 
ing. 

‘‘^Only idle verses, Padre.” 

^myidle?” 

‘^Because they cannot express what I would have 
them.” 

The friar pondered, his fingers laced in his beard. 
To-day, in the dreariness of the elemental turmoil with- 
out, he longed intensely to touch some chord in this 
lonely man that would vibrate to confidence. 

^^What would you have them express?” he asked at 
length. 

^^A dream of mine last night. Padre.” 

A dream ! Dreams were but the reflex of the waking 
mind. The friar felt suddenly nearer his goal. 

^^Will you tell it to me, my son ?” 

Gordon rose, went to the window and looked out as 
the other had done. His face was still turned seaward 
as he began : 

^Tt was a dream of darkness. The sun was extin- 
guished, and moon and stars went wandering into space. 
It was not the darkness of storm and night. Padre, for 
in them is movement. In my dream there was none. 
Without the sun, rivers and lakes lay stagnant. The 
waves were dead, the tides were in their graves. Ships 


238 


THE CASTAWAY 


rotted on the sea till their masts fell. The very winds 
were withered. Darkness was everything — ^it was the 
universe ! That was my dream.^^ 

^There is no darkness in God’s universe/’ said Padre 
Somalian, after a pause. ^Tt is only in the human 
heart. ^Men love darkness rather than light/ says the 
Book. Did men welcome it in your dream ?” 

^^Morning came/’ went on Gordon; ^^came, and went, 
and came, but it was not day. Men forgot their hates 
and passions. They prayed only for light — ^but it did 
not come. They lived by watch-fires, and when their 
fuel was gone, they put the torch to their own homes to 
see one another’s faces. Huts and palaces and thrones 
blazed for beacons. Whole cities burned at once. The 
forests were set on fire and their crackling trunks 
dropped and faded hour by hour. As the ember-flashes 
fell by fits on the men who watched them, their faces 
looked unearthly. Some lay down in the ashes and 
howled and hid their eyes. Some rested their chins on 
their clenched hands and smiled. Others hurried to and 
fro feeding the flames, looking up only to curse the sky 
— ^the pall of a past world. Wild birds fluttered on the 
baked ground, and brutes crawled tame and tremulous. 
Vipers hissed under foot and did not sting. They were 
killed for food. War was everywhere, for every meal was 
bought with blood, and each man sat apart sullenly, and 
gorged himself in the darkness. One thought ruled— 
death, quick and ignominious. Eamine came. Men 
died and lay unburied. The starving devoured the 
starved. There was no human love left. There was only 
one unselfish, faithful thing. It was a dog, and he was 
faithful to a corpse. He had no food himself, but he 


THE CASTAWAY 


23 » 


kept beasts and famished men at bay till he too died^ 
licking his master’s dead hand.” 

The words had fallen measuredly, deliberately, as if 
each aspect of the fearful picture, on the background of 
the tempest that gloomed out of doors, stood distinct. 

There was a moment’s silence. Then the friar asked : 
^^Was that the dream’s end?” 

Gordon had turned from the window and picked up 
one of the written fragments. He read the last few 
lines aloud : 

“The crowd was famished by degrrees; hut two 
Of an enoraii»»fi city did sunriTC, 

And they were enemies: they met beside 
The dying embers of an altar-place 
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things 
For an unholy usage; they raked up, 

And shivering, scraped with their cold skeleton hand& 

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath 

Blew for a little life, and made a flame 

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up 

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld 

Each other’s aspects — saw, and shrieked, and died — 

Even of their mutual hideousness they died. 

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow 
Despair had written ‘Fiend.’ ’’ 

There was no sound for a while when he finished. 
The padre sat motionless, his head bent. To him the 
picture drawn in those terse lines expressed a black in- 
ferno of human hopelessness into which he had never 
looked — ^the very apotheosis of the damned. He rose, 
came to where Gordon stood, and laid a hand on his 
shoulder. 

‘^My son,” he said gently, ^^there was one darkest 


240 


THE CASTAWAY 


hour for the world. But it was in that hour that light 
and hope for men were born. Every man bears a cross 
of despair to his Calvary. But He who bore the heavi- 
est saw beyond. What did He say? ^Not my will, hut 
Thine r 

Gordon seemed to hear AnnabeFs voice repeating an 
old question: ^^What do you believe in that is good, I 
should like to know?” The friar had not asked ques- 
tions; he had spoken as if voicing a faith common to 
them both and to all men. 

Padre Somalian said no more. He left the room 
slowly. 

The man standing by the window had made no re- 
ply. In the old days he would have smiled. How his 
brow frowned haggardly. The age-old answer of the 
churchman! To what multitudinous human miseries 
it had proffered comfort! The sinless suffering and 
its promise. What an unostentatiously beautiful belief 
— ^if it were only true. If it were only true! 

^^What an advantage,” he thought, ^^its possession gives 
the padre here! If it is true, he will have his reward 
hereafter ; if there is no hereafter, he at the worst can be 
but with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the 
assistance of an exalted hope through life without sub- 
sequent disappointment. I have no horror of the awak- 
ening. In the midst of myriads of living and dead crea- 
tions, why should I be anxious about an atom ? It will 
not please the great that sowed the star-clusters to 
damn me for an unbelief I cannot help, to a worse per- 
dition than that I walk through now — and shall walk 
through as long as I live !” 

He spoke the last phrase half-aloud. ^^As long as I 


.THE CASTAWAY) 


241 


live.” Why should it be for long? Here — despair; 
there — no worse, if not a dreamless sleep ! 

«^Why not?” he said to himself with grim humor, 
should many a good day have blown my brains out 
but for the recollection that it would pleasure Lady 
Hoel, — and even then, if I could have been certain to 
haunt her !” 

He turned and threw the window open and a scurry 
of rainy wind whirled the sheets of paper about the 
floor* He looked out and down. On that side of the 
island the beach had been only a narrow weedy ribbon 
soaked by every storm. How the wind that had driven 
the sea into the pent lagoon, had piled it deep in the 
turbid shallows, and the wall fell sheer into the gray- 
green heave. 

^^Of what use is my life to any one in the world?” 
he argued calmly. ^^Who is there of all that have come 
nearest to me to whom I have not been a curse? I 
am bound to a wife who hates me. Years will make 
my memory a reproach to my child. Through me my 
enemies stabbed my sister. Shelley, my only comrade 
in that flrst year of ostracism, I hurt and disappointed. 
Teresa, whom I love, and have no right to love — ^what 
have I made her life! It is a fitting turn to such a 
page.” 

The inner shutter of the window fastened with a mas- 
sive iron bolt. He drew the latter from its place, put 
it into his pocket, and buttoned his coat tightly. A 
sentence oddly recurred to him at the moment — a verse 
from a quaint old epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, 
unknown to the Yulgate, which, written in Armenian, 
he had found in the monastery library and translated to 


242 


THE CASTAWAY 


torture his mind to attention : ^^Hencef orth, no one can 
trouble me further ; for I bear on my body this fetter/’ 
A seemly text for him it would be soon ! 

He approached the window. 

There was a step behind him and Padre Somalian’s 
voice startled him. ^^My son, a message for you.” 

Gordon turned heavily, the chill of that intercepted 
purpose cold upon him. He took the slender roll of 
parchment the friar handed him and opened it. It was 
officially ruled and engrossed — a, baptismal certificate: 


AT ST. GILES’-IN-THE-FIELBS, LONDON. 


Christian 

Name. 

Parents’ 

Christian 

Names. 

Surname. 

Father’s 

Residence. 

Father’s 

Rank. 

By Whom. 

Allegra. 

Rt. Hon. 
George 
Gordon, 
(Reputed) 
by Jane. 

Clermont. 

TraveUing 
on the 
Continent. 

Peer. 

Percy 

Bysshe 

Shelley. 


The man who read snatched at the top of the paper. 
The date was March ninth, 1818. He felt a mist before 
his eyes. Almost two years ago, and he had not known ! 
Por two years he had had a daughter from whom he 
was not necessarily debarred, whom hatred in England 
could not touch. A thrill ran through him. He felt 
a recrudescence of all those tender impulses that had 
stirred in him when Ada was bom. The mother’s dis- 
like or indifference had doubtless concealed the fact 
from him. And indeed, when in that time had he de- 
served otherwise? Why was he told now? Who had 
brought this record? 


THE CASTAWAY. 


243 


The padre, watching him curiously, saw the pang 
that shot across his face — ^the pang of the new remorse- 
ful conscience. 

“The gentleman in the gondola,’’ he said, “asked 
to see you.” 

“I will go down,” Gordon answered. He closed the 
window, drew the iron bar from his coat and slipped it 
back between its staples. 

“A wild day to have crossed the lagoon,” the friar 
observed. “Stay — ^take this.” He threw off the outer 
robe he wore and held it out. ^Tt will shed the rain.” 

Gordon went rapidly through the wall-gate to the 
wharf where he had first set foot on the island. His 
own gondola, battered and tossing, lay there. 

He stopped abruptly, for he recognized a figure 
standing by it, blue-coated, bareheaded, his long hair 
streaming in the wind. It was Shelley. His hand was 
outstretched, and with a quick movement Gordon strode 
forward and took it. A swift glance passed between the 
troubled, hollow eyes under the gra)dng hair, and the 
clear, wild blue ones. Shelley’s held no reproach, only 
comprehension. 

“Fletcher told me where to find you,” he said; “you 
must forgive him.” 

“Where is the child?” 

“In the convent of BagnacavaUo, near Ravenna.” 

“And— Jane?” 

“She is vrith us now in Pisa.” 

A question he could not ask hung on Gordon’s lips 
as the other added : 

“She is going to America with a troupe of players.” 

She no longer wished the child, then ! Allegra 


244 


.THE CASTAWAY 


might be his. His, to care for, to teach to love him, 
to come in time to fill a part, maybe, of that void in his 
heart which had ached so constantly for Ada, further 
from him now than any distance measurable by leagues ! 

He looked again at the scrap of paper still in his 
hand, heedless of the wind that tore at his robe and 
lashed him with spume plucked from the tunnelled 
waves like spilt milk from a pan. Why had it come at 
just that moment to stay his leap into the hereafter? 
Was there, after all, deeper than its apparent fatalism, 
an obscure purpose in what man calls chance? Was this 
daughter, born out of the pale as he himself was beyond 
the pale, to give him the comfort all else conspired to 
deny ? A slender hope grew tendril-like in him. 

While Shelley waited, Gordon untied the girdle about 
his waist, stripped off the brown robe and, folding it, 
placed it out of the rain, in the niche where stood the 
leaden Virgin. From his pocket he took some bank- 
notes — all he had with him — laid them on top of the 
robe and weighted them carefully with fragments of 
rock. 

Last he lifted the flat stone under which was Teresa’s 
prayer. The paper was wet and blistered from the 
spray. He put it carefully in his pocket. Then with 
one backward glance at the monastery, he leaped into 
the gondola beside Shelley and signed to the gondolier 
to cast off. 

For an hour the padre sat alone in the library, mus- 
ing, wondering what manner of message had called that 
conflict of emotion to the other’s face. As he rose at 


THE CASTAWAY 


245 


length, the wind rattled the casement and called his 
attention. 

He paused before it. ^^Why did he have the iron 
bolt ?” he said to himself. ^The window was open, too.^^ 

Standing, a thought came that made him start. He 
crossed himself and hastened ont of the room. 

A few moments later he was at the wharf. The 
gondola was gone, but by the shrine he found what 
Gordon had left. 

He lifted the silver crucifix that hung at his girdle 
and his lips moved audibly: 

^^0 Thou who quieted the tempest he prayed in his 
native tongue. ^^Thou didst send this racked heart to 
me in Thy good purpose. Have I failed in aught to- 
ward him ? Did I, in my blindness, offer him less than 
Thy comfort? Grant in Thy will that I may once 
more minister to him and that when his storm shall 
calm, I may hold before his eyes this symbol of Thy 
passion and forgiveness 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


THE PASSING OF JANE CLERMONT 

The storm-clouds were gone. An Italian spring was 
painting the hills with April artistry. Myrtle hedges 
had waked to childish green, lusty creepers swung callow 
tendrils, meadows were afire with the delicate, trembling 
anemone, and the rustling olive copses were a silver 
firmament of leaves. The immemorial pine woods that 
stretched about Ravenna, with the groves and rivers 
which Boccaccio’s pen had made forever haunted, were 
bathed in sun and noisy with winged creatures. 

Under the boughs of the balsamic forest, through the 
afternoon, from the convent of Bagnacavallo into Ra- 
venna, a wagonette had been driven. It had carried 
a woman, young, dark-haired and of Spanish type — 
she who once had ruled the greenroom of Drury Lane. 
Time had made slight change in Jane Clermont’s pi- 
quant beauty. A little deeper of tone and fuller of lip 
she was, perhaps a little colder of look; but her black 
eyes snapped and sparkled with all their old daring. 

The convent road met the highway on the skirt of the 
town. At the juncture sat a prosperous osteria half 
surrounded by trellised arbors, blowsy with yellow snap- 
dragons and gilly-flowers, and bustling all day long 
with the transient travel of tourists, to whom Ravenna 
( 246 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


247 


with, its massive clusters of wide-eaved houses and dun- 
colored churches, its few streets of leisurely business, its 
foliaged squares and its colonnaded opera-house, were 
of less interest than the tomb of Dante. The inn held 
a commanding position. The post-road that passed its 
door curved southward toward Pisa ; northward, it 
stretched to Venice. Prom both directions through Ea-' 
venna, lumbered diligence and chaise. 

At the osteria the wagonette halted, made a detour 
and was finally drawn up in the shadow of the arbors ' 
where it was unobserved from the inn and yet had a 
screened view of both roads. Por hours the vehicle sat 
there while the driver dozed, the occupant nesting her 
chin in her gloved hand and from time to time rest- 
lessly shifting her position. 

Her patience was at last rewarded. Two men on 
horseback had paused at the cross-road. One was Shel- 
ley, astride the lank beast that had borne him from Pisa 
to Venice. The other was George Gordon. 

^^So he did come she muttered, peering through the 
screen of silver twigs. ^‘1 thought he would. I wonder 
what he will say when he finds I have changed my mind 
and settled Allegra’s affairs another way.’^ 

She watched the pair as they parted. The dropping 
sun danced in tiny flashes from the brass buttons on 
Shelley’s blue coat. ^Toor philosopher!” she solilo- 
quized with pitying tolerance. ^TTou are going back to 
your humdrum Pisa, your books and your Mary. The 
world attracts you no more now with your money than 
it did when we found you in the debtors’ prison. Well, 
every one to his taste! I wonder why you always 
troubled yourself about George Gordon.” 


248 


THE CASTAWAY 


Her eyes narrowed as they lingered on the other fig- 
ure, turning alone into the forest road from which her 
wagonette had come. 

‘T would like to see your lordship’s face when you get 
there !” she said half aloud. ^^My authority is the con- 
vent’s now. You may take your daughter — if you canT 

Hot till both riders were out of sight did the wagon- 
ette draw into the highway. 

Jane Clermont rode on, humming an air, looking 
curiously at the various vehicles that passed her on the 
smooth, well-travelled road, thinking with triumph of 
the man she had seen riding to Bagnacavallo. She had 
guessed the object of Shelley’s trip to Venice, but the 
knowledge had not at first stirred her natural and self- 
absorbed indifference. It was a malicious afterthought, 
a gratuitous spice of venom springing more from an 
instinctive maleficence than from any deeper umbrage, 
that had inspired that parting visit to the convent. The 
impulse that had led her to assure herself of Gordon’s 
fruitless journey was distinctly feline. 

A mile from the town her reflections were abruptly 
broken. She spoke to the driver and he stopped. 

A sweating horse was approaching. Its trappings 
were of an ostentatious gaudiness. The face of the man 
it carried was swarthy and mustachioed and his bearing 
had the effect of flamboyant and disordered braggadocio. 

^^Trevanion !” she exclaimed, with an accent of sur- 
prise. She had not seen him for two years. As she 
watched, her face showed a certain amusement. 

He would possibly have passed her by, for his gaze 
was set straight ahead, but when he came opposite, she 
leaned from the carriage and spoke his name. 


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249 


His horse halted instantly; a hot red leaped into his 
oriental cheeks, a look fierce and painful into his eyes. 
He sat still, looking at her without a word. 

thought you were in England,^^ he said at length. 

^^So I was till last fall. Since, I\e been at Pisa with 
the Shelleys. But I find the continent precious dull. 
I see you haven’t been caught yet for deserting from the 
navy. Is that why you don’t stay in London? Tell 
me,” she asked suddenly; ^Vhere is George Gordon 
now ?” 

^Tn Venice.” 

^^Eeally !” Her voice had a kind of measured mock- 
ery that did not cloak its satire. ‘^And yet I hear of his 
doings in many other places — ^Lucca, Bologna, all the 
post-towns. From the descriptions, I judge he has 
changed, not only in looks but in habits.” 

He winced and made no reply. 

^Tshaw!” she said, scorn suddenly showing. ^^Don’t 
you think I guessed? Gulling a few travellers in the 
post-houses with a brawling impersonation! Suppose 
a million should think George Gordon the tasteless 
roustabout ruflSan you make him out? What do you 
gain? One of these days, some tourist friend of his — 
Mr. Hobhouse, for instance ; he used to be a great trav- 
eller — will put a sharp end to your play.” 

^T’ll risk that !” he threw her. "And I’d risk more !” 

^^How you hate him !” 

He laughed — a hard, dare-devil sound. "Haven’t I 
cause enough?” 

"Not so far as I know. But I wish you luck, if the 
game pleases you. It’s nothing to me.” 

"It was something to you, once,” he said, "wasn’t it ?’^ 


250 


THE CASTAWAY 


She smiled amusedly. ^^How tragic you always were ! 
He was never more to me than that^^ — she snapped her 
fingers. ^^Constancy is too heavy a role. I always pre- 
ferred lighter parts. I am going to play in America. 
Why don’t you turn stroller and act to some purpose? 
Why not try New York ?” 

While she spoke her tone had changed. It had be- 
come softer, more musical. Her lashes drooped with 
well-gauged coquetry. 

^T/ook/’ she said, in a lower key ; ^^am I as handsome 
as I used to be at Drury Lane — ^when you said you’d 
like to see the world with me ?” 

A smoldering fire kindled in his eyes as he gazed at 
her. He half leaned from the saddle — ^half put out his 
hand. 

But at his movement she dropped the mask. She 
laughed in open scorn. ^^A fig for your hate !” she ex- 
claimed contemptuously. ‘‘1 have no liking for George 
Gordon, but he was never a sneak at any rate !” 

The man to whom she spoke struck savage spurs to 
his horse. As he wheeled, she swept him a curtsy from 
the carriage seat. ^^Joy to your task!” she cried, and 
drove on with her lips curled. 

^^He doesn’t know Gordon is near Eavenna,” she 
thought presently. ^Tf he gives one of his free enter- 
tainments at the inn to-night, there may be an inter- 
esting meeting. What a pity I shall miss it I” and she 
laughed. 

A little further on, the carriage turned to the west- 
ward toward the Swiss frontier. 

As Trevanion reined the animal he bestrode to its 
haimches at the porch of the osteria, where Jane Cler- 


THE CASTAWAY 


251 


months wagonette had waited, he looked back along the 
road with a muttered curse. Then he kicked a sleep- 
ing hound from the step and went in with an assumed 
limp and a swagger. 

Two hours later, when the earlj dusk had fallen, andi 
the ghostly disk that had hung all day in the sky was 
yellowing above the olive trees, George Gordon flung 
his bridle wearily to a groom at the inn. His face was 
set and thwarted. He had been to the convent, to And 
that a wall had suddenly reared between him and the 
possession of his child. To surmount this would mean 
publicity, an appeal to British authority, red tape, a 
million Italian delays, — perhaps failure then. 

As he stood, listening to the stir of the inn he was 
about to enter, a low voice suddenly spoke from the 
shadow of a hedge : ‘^Excellence V’ 

Turning he recognized the huge frame of the gondo- 
lier who had borne Teresa from the Piazza San Marco 
on the night she had come to warn him. His heart 
leaped into his throat. Had the man followed him from 
Venice? Did he bring a message from her? 

“Excellence ! I heard in the town that you were at the 
inn. I would like speech with you, but I must not be 
seen. Will you follow me ?” 

Even in his surprise, Gordon felt an instant’s wonder. 
He himself had not yet entered the osteria. How had 
the other heard of his presence ? The wonder, however, 
was lost in the thought of Teresa. 

He turned from the inn and followed the figure si- 
lently through the falling shadows. 


CHAPTEK XXXIV 


TITA INTERVENES 

Under the trees, as Gordon listened to the gondolier, 
the night grew deeper. The moonlight that mellowed 
over the pine forests spectrally outspread, the burnished 
river and the town before them, misted each hedge and 
tree with silver. A troubadour nightingale bubbled in 
?tiie middle distance from some palazzo garden and from 
jkhe nearer osteria came sounds of bustle. Through all 
breathed the intimate soft wind of the south bearing 
1^2© smell of lime-blossoms and of sleeping bean-fields. 

Wonder at Titans appearance had melted into a great 
wave of gladness that swept him at the sudden know- 
ledge that she, Teresa, was there in Eavenna near him, 
mistress of Casa Guiccioli, whose very portal he had 
passed that afternoon. But the joy had died speedily; 
thereafter every word had seemed to burn itself into his 
heart. 

^Tf he hated her, why did he wish to make her his 
contessa? Tell me that. Excellence! It has been so 
all these weeks, ever since her wedding. Sometimes I 
have heard him sneer at her — always about you. Excel- 
lence — ^how he knew she ever saw you I cannot tell! 
His servants go spying — spying, always when she is out 
of the casa.^^ 


( 252 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


253 


The man who listened turned his head with a move- 
ment of physical pain, as Tita went on, resentfully: 

^^And she is a Gamba, bom to be a great lady! If 
she left him, he would bring her back, unless she went 
from Italy. And who is to help her do that? Her 
brother is in another land. Her father is sick and she 
will not tell him anything. There is none but me in 
Casa Guiccioli who does not serve the signore too well ! 
1 ' thought — he finished, twisting his red cap in his 
great fingers, thought— if I told you — ^you would 

take her away from him, to your own country, maybe.’^ 
Gordon almost smiled in his anguish. To the simple 
soul of this loyal servant, on whom conventional morals 
sat with Italian lightness, here was an uncomplex solu- 
tion ! Turn household liighwayman and fiy from the 
states of the Church to enjoy the plunder ! And of all 
places — to England ! Open a new domestic chapter in 
some provincial British country-side as “Mr. Smith,” 
perhaps, “a worthy retired merchant of Lima 1” The 
bitter humor couched in the fancy made sharper his 
pang of utter impotence. Italy was not England, he 
thought grimly. In that very difference had lain ship- 
wreck for them both. Teresa could not leave her hus- 
band openly, as Annabel had left him ! The Church of 
Home knew no divorce, and inside its bond only a papal 
decree could give her the right to live apart from her 
husband under her own father’s roof. 

Tita’s voice spoke again, eagerly: ^Y'ou will come. 
Excellence ? The signore is from Eavenna now, at one 
of his estates in Eomagna — ^you can see her ! Hone shall 
know, if you come with me. You will. Excellence ?” 

To see her again ! Gordon had not realized how much 


254 


THE CASTAWAY 


it meant till to-niglit, when the possibility found him 
quivering from his disappointment at the convent. A 
stolen hour with her ! Why not? Yet — discovery. Her 
husband’s servants, spies upon her every moment ! To 
steal secretly to her thus unbidden and perhaps crowd 
upon her a worse catastrophe than that at San Lazzarro ! 

He shook his head. ^^Ho. Hot unless she knows I 
am here and bids me come.” 

will go and tell her. Excellence !” 

^Tell her I did not know she was in Eavenna, but 
that — ^that I would die to serve her. Say that !” 

Won will wait here, Excellence?” 

^Wes.” 

Tita swung round and disappeared. 

It seemed an immeasurable time that Gordon waited, 
striding fiercely up and down, listening to every sound. 
At the inn a late diligence had unloaded its contingent 
of chattering tourists for the night. He could hear 
phrases spoken in English. The words bore a myriad- 
voiced suggestion, yet how little their appeal meant to 
him at that moment ! All England, save for Ada, was 
less to him then than a single house there in Eavenna — 
and a convent buried in the forest under that moon. On 
such another perfect day and amber night, he thought, 
he had found Teresa’s miniature and had fled with 
Jane Clermont. How substance and shadow had re- 
placed one another. To-day Jane had touched his life 
vaguely and painfully in passing from it ! Teresa was 
the sole reality. What wmuld she say? What word 
would Tita bring? 

Long as it seemed, it was in fact less than an hour 
before the gondolier stood again before him. 


THE CASTAWAY 


255 


Ten minutes later they were in the streets of the 
town, avoiding its lighted thoroughfares, walking swift- 
ly, Tita in the lead. At length, threading a lane be- 
tween walled gardens flanking great houses whose fronts 
frowned on wider avenues, they stood before a columned 
gate. This Gordon^s guide unlocked. 

will watch here,” he said, ^^ou will not tell hef 
I came to you flrst of my own thought. Excellence ?” h€ 
added anxiously. 

‘T will not tell her,” answered Gordon. 

He entered with a loudly beating heart. 


CHAPTEE XXXV 


IN THE CASA GAEDEN 

The close was still — only the flutter of moths and the 
plash of a fountain tinkling wetly. Here and there 
in the deeper shade of cloistral walks, the moonlight, 
falling through patches of young leaves, flecked blood- 
less bacchantes and bronze Tritons nestling palely in 
slimb tangles of mimosa. This was all Gordon distin- 
guished at flrst as he moved, his hands before him, his 
feet feeling their way on the cool sward. 

Suddenly a low breath seemed to pierce the stillness. 
A sense of nearness rushed upon him. His arm, out- 
stretched, touched something yielding. 

‘‘Teresa!’^ he cried, and his hands found hers and 
drew her close to him. In that flrst moment of silence 
he was keenly conscious of her breath against his cheek, 
hurried and warm. 

‘T know — I know,^^ he said in a choked voice. ^^Tita 
told me all. I would give my body inch by inch, my 
blood drop by drop to give back to your life what I have 
taken from it 

She shook her head. ^TTou have taken nothing from 
it. Before that night on the square it held nothing — I 
have learned that since.^^ 

She was feeling a sense of exaltation. Since the day 
( 256 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


257 ' 


at San Lazzarro she had never expected to see him 
again. To her he had been a glorious spirit, struggling 
for lost foothold on the causeways of redemption. In 
her mental picture he had stood always as she had seen 
him on the monastery path, pale, clad in a monk^s coarse 
robe, the vesture of earthly penance. This picture had 
blotted out his past, whatever it had been, whatever of 
rumor was true or false, whatever she may for a time 
have believed. Every word he had spoken remained a 
living iterate memory. And the thought that her hand 
had drawn him to his better self had filled her with a 
painful ecstasy. 

^‘Teresa,^^ he said unsteadily, long ago forfeited 
every right to hope and happiness. And if tMs were 
not true, by a tie that holds me, and by a bond you be- 
lieve in, I have still no right to stand here now. But 
fate drew me here to-day — as it drew me to you that 
morning at La Mira. It is stronger than I — stronger 
than us both. Yet I have brought you nothing but 
misery 

^‘You have brought me much more than that,^^ she in- 
terrupted. knew nothing of life when I met you. 
I have learned it now as you must have known it to 
write as you have. I know that it is vaster than I ever 
dreamed — ^more sorrowful, but sweeter, too.^^ 

A stone bench showed near, wound with moonbeams, 
and she sat down, making room beside her. In the 
white light she seemed unreal — a fantasy in wild-rose 
brocade. A chain of dull gold girdled her russet hair, 
dropping a single emerald to quiver and sparkle on her 
forehead. Her face was pale, but with a shadowy some- 
thing born of those weeks. 


^58 


THE CASTAWAY 


What he saw there was awakened self-reliance and 
mettle, the birthright of clean inheritance. The wedding 
gondola that had borne a girl to San Lazzarro had car- 
ried back a woman, rebellious, agonized, flushed to every 
nerve. She had opposed a woman’s pride to the hatred 
that otherwise would have made the ensuing time a slow 
unrolling nightmare; had taken her place passively as 
mistress of the gloomy casa with its atmosphere of cold 
grandeur and miserliness, thankful that its host was 
niggardly of entertainment, enduring as best she might 
the petty persecution with which the old count sur- 
rounded her. His anger, soured by the acid sponge of 
jealousy, had fed itself daily with this baiting. He 
believed she had come smirched from the very altar to 
his name and place. Yet he had no proof, and to make 
the scandal public — ^to put her away — ^would have seared 
his pride, laid him open to the wrath of her kin, brought 
her brother back to Italy to avenge the slight upon 
their house, and most of all to be dreaded, would have 
necessitated the repayment of her dowry. A slow and 
secret satisfaction was all he had, and under it her spirit 
had galled and chafed him. In this strait she had had 
no confldant, for her father, aging rapidly and failing, 
she would not sadden, and whenever he drove to Casg 
Guiccioli from his villa, some miles from the town, — 
sole relic of his wasted properties, — ^had striven to con- 
ceal all evidence of unhappiness. Even when she had 
determined on a momentous step — a secret appeal to the 
papal court for such a measure of freedom as was possi- 
ble — she had determined not to tell him yet. Grief and 
repression had called to the surface the latent capabili- 
ties which in the girl had been but promises, and these 


THE CASTAWAY 


259 


spoke now to Gordon in a beauty strong, eager and far- 
divining. 

“What I have known of life is not its sweets,” he an- 
swered in bitterness. “I have gathered its poison- 
flowers, and their perfume clings to the life I live now.” 

^TBut it will not be so,” she said earnestly. “I believe 
more than you told me at La Mira — ^when you said it 
had been one of your faults that you had never justified 
yourself. You were never all they said. Something 
tells me that. If you did evil, it was not because you 
chose it or took pleasure in it. For a while I doubted 
everything, but that day at San Lazzarro, when I saw 
you — ^the moment you spoke — it came back to me. E'o 
matter what I might think or hear again, in my heart I 
should always believe that now !” 

He put out his hand, a gesture of hopelessness and 
protest. His mind was crying out against the twin 
implacables, Time and Space. If man could but push 
back the Now to Then, enweave the There and Here! 
If in such a re-formed universe. He and She might this 
hour be standing — no irrevocable past, only the new 
Now! What might not life yield up for him, of its 
burgeoning, not of its corruption, its hope, not of its 
despair ! 

“That day !” he repeated. “I saw you in ^ gondola. 
I would have spared you that meeting.” 

^TTet that was what told me. If I had not seen you 
there — She paused. 

The chains of his repression clung about him like the 
load of broken wings. The knowledge that had come 
as he walked the floor of his monastery room with the 
burn of a blow on his forehead, had spelled abnegation. 


260 


THE CASTAWAY 


She must never know the secret he carried — must in 
time forget her own. Once out, he could never shackle 
it again. He completed her sentence : 

^You would have forgotten the sooner 

should never have forgotten/^ she said softly. 

He was silent. He dared not look at her face, but he 
saw her hands, outstretched, clasping her knee. 

Presently — he could not guess the dear longing for 
denial that made her tone shake now ! — she said : 

^Yita told me that — when you came to Eavenna — ^you 
had not known — 

He rose to his feet, feeling the chains weakening, the 
barriers of all that had lain unspoken, yet not unfelt, 
burning away. 

^Tt was true,^^ he answered, confronting her. did 
not know it. But if I had known all I know to-night, 
I would have crossed seas and mountains to come to 
you! How that I have seen you— what can I do? 
Teresa! Teresa 

The exclamation held trenchant pain — something 
else, too, that for the life of him he could not repress. 
It pierced her with a darting rapture. 

Since that hour at the monastery, with its pang and 
its reassurance, as she felt budding those new, mysteri- 
ous flowers of faith and heart experience, she had felt 
a deeper unguessed want. Over and over she had re- 
peated to herself the last words he had said before that 
painful interruption : ^^Because it was a prayer of yours 
for me/' Her soul had been full of a vague, unphrased 
yearning for all the meanings that might lie unex- 
pressed in the coupling of those two words. So now, 


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261 


as she heard him speak her name in that shaken accent, 
her heart thrilled. 

^^Ah,” she breathed, ^^then you care — so much?” 

His fingers clenched. He was torn with two emo- 
tions: self-abasement, and a hungry desire, lashed by 
propinquity, to take her in his arms, to defy vow and 
present, be the consequence what it might. There came 
upon him again the feeling that had gripped him when 
she stood with him among the circling maskers, violet- 
eyed, lilac-veined, bright with new impulses, passionate 
and lovely. He leaned toward her. If she but knew 
how he cared! 

A sound startled them both. Her hand grasped his 
with apprehensive fingers as she listened. ^^Look ! 
There beyond the hedge. A shadow moved.” 

He looked. Only an acacia stirred in the light air. 

^Tt is nothing,” he reassured her. ^^Tita is at the 
gate.” 

^^Oh,” she said fearfully, "I should not have said 
come. There is risk for you here.” 

^^What would I not have risked?” 

^^Listen !” 

Another sound came to both now the pounding of 
horses’ hoofs, borne over the root from the street — the 
rumble of heavy coach wheels. It ceased all at once, and 
lights sprang into windows across the shrubbery. 

She came to her feet as Tita hurried toward them. 
^Tt is the signore,” warned the gondolier. 

"'Dio mio r she whispered. ‘^Go — go quickly !” 

He caught her hands. “If only I could help you, 
serve you !” 

“You can,” she said hurriedly. “I have a letter on 


262 


THE CASTAWAY 


which much depends — ^for the Contessa Alhrizzi at 
Venice. I cannot trust a messenger.’^ 

^Tt shall start to-night.’^ 

Ht is in my room. I will send it after you by Tita. 
Ah— hasten!’^ 

He bent and touched his lips to a curl that had blown 
like litten gold against her shoulder. Her eyes met his 
an instant in fluttering, happy confusion. Then, as he 
followed Tita quickly to the gate, she turned and ran 
toward the house. 

She had not seen a man, crouched in the shadow of a 
hedge, who had hurried within doors to greet the master 
of the casa so unexpectedly returned. She did not see 
the rage that colored her husband’s shrunken cheeks in 
his chamber as Paolo, his Corsican secretary, imparted 
to him two pieces of information: the presence of the 
stranger in the garden and the arrival that afternoon 
at the osteria of him Venice called ^^the wicked milord.” 

The old count pondered, with shaking fingers. He 
hated the Englishman of Venice; hated him for robbing 
him of the youth and beauty he had gloated over, for the 
arrow to his pride — ^with a hatred that had settled 
deeper each day, fanatical and demented. The story of 
the garden trespasser inspired now an unholy craving 
♦ for reprisal, unformed and but half conceived. He 
^summoned his secretary. 

In a few moments more — a half-hour after Teresa’s 
letter had started on its way to the inn — ^his coach, with 
its six white horses, bearing Paolo, and followed by four 
of the casa servants afoot, was being driven thither by 
a roundabout course. 


CHAPTER XXXYI 


THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 

The osteria, as Gordon approached, seemed gurgling 
with hilarity. At its side the huge unhitched diligence 
yawned, a dark bulk waiting for the morrow’s journey. 
Some of the passengers it had carried were gathered on 
the porch before the open windows, listening, with pos- 
tures that indicated a more than ordinary curiosity and 
interest, to sounds from the tap-room. There were 
women’s forms among them. 

Tourists were little to Gordon’s liking. They had 
bombarded his balcony at Diodati with spy-glasses, had 
ambushed him at Venice when he went to opera or 
ridotto. To him they stood for the insatiable taboo of 
public disesteem — ^the chuckling fetishism that mocked 
him still from beyond blue water. He skirted the inn 
in the shade of the cypresses and passed to an arbor 
w^hich the angle of the building screened from the 
group. 

On its edge he paused and gazed out over the fields 
and further forest asleep. With what bitterness he had 
ridden scarce three hours before from those woods I 
( 263 ) 


264 


THE CASTAWAY 


Now it was shot through with an arrow of cardinal joy 
whose very rankle was a painful delight. In the jar of 
conflicting sensations he had not reasoned or presaged;^ 
he could only feel. 

What was the import of Teresa’s letter, he wondered. 
Much depended on it, she had said in that agitated mo- 
ment. A thought flitted to him. The Contessa Al- 
brizzi had lived much iu Rome — was, he remembered, 
cousin to a cardinal. Could this message be an appeal 
for deliverance from an impossible position? Might 
Teresa yet be free ; not from her marriage bond, hut at 
least from this hourly torture in Casa Guiccioli ? 
With the quick feeling of relief for her, wound a sharp 
sense of personal vantage. For him that would mean 
the right to see her often and unopposed. Yet, he 
argued instantly with self-reproach, was not this the 
sole right he could not possess, then or ever? What 
would it be but tempting her love .on and on, only to 
leave it naked and ashamed at last? 

A gust of noise rose behind him. It issued from a 
window opening out of the tap-room into the arbor. 
On the heels of the sound he caught shattered comments 
from the peering group on the front porch — ^feminine 
voices speaking English: 

^T’ve always wanted to see him. We watched three 
whole days in Venice. How young he looks !” 

‘^What a monster! And to think he is a peer and 
once wrote poetry. There! See — ^he’s looking this 
way !” 

Gordon started and half turned, but he had not been 
observed ; the angle of the wall hid him effectually. 

Just then a single vociferate voice rose to dominant 


THE CASTAWAY 


265 


speech in the room — a reckless, ribald utterance like 
one thickened with liquor. It conveyed an invitation 
to everybody within hearing to share its owner^s punch. 
Laughter followed, and from outside a flutter of with- 
drawing skirts and a masculine exclamation of affront. 

With a puzzled wonder the man in the arbor listened, 
while the voice within lifted in an uncertain song: 

*‘Fare thee well! and if forever, 

Still forever fare thee well; 

Even though unforgiving, never 
’Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.” 

^^Shameless brute !” came from the porch. wouldn’t 
have believed it!” 

Smothering a flerce ejaculation, Gordon strode to the 
window and gazed into the room. The singer broke off 
with a laugh: 

^That’s the song I always warble, gentlemen, when 
I’m in my cups. I wrote it to my wife — ^when I was a 
Bond Street lounger, a London cicisbeo and fan-carrier 
to a woman.” 

The man who stared across the sill with a painful 
fascination was witnessing a glaring, vulgar travesty of 
himself. Not the George Gordon he was, or, indeed, 
had ever been, but the George Gordon the world be- 
lieved him; the abandoned profligate of wassail and 
blackguardism, whom tourists boasted of having seen, 
and of whom an eleventh commandment had been pro- 
mulgated for all British womankind — ^not to read his 
books. And this counterpart was being played by a man 
whose Moorish, theatric face he knew — a man he had 
flung from his path at Geneva, when he stood with 


266 


THE CASTAWAY 


Jane Clermont by the margin of the lake on the night 
he and she had fled together. A man who hated him ! 

The clever effrontery of the deception showed how 
deep was that hatred. Gordon understood now how 
Tita had heard of his presence at the osteria before he 
had entered it. The farceur inside did not know the 
man he impersonated was in Kavenna to-night. This, 
then, was jaot the only caravansary at which the bur- 
lesque had played. Nor were these tourists smirk- 
ing in the tap-room, or listening open-mouthed outside 
to the clumsy farrago, the only ones to return to Eng- 
land with clacking tongues. This was how the London 
papers had bristled with garbled inventions ! This 
scene was only a step in a consistent plan to blacken 
his name anew throughout the highways of continental 
travel ! 

A guttural whisper escaped his lips. It would be an- 
other bar between him and possession of Allegra. And 
Teresa ? If these post-house tales reached her ears ! A 
crimson mist grew before his eyes. 

A more reckless and profane emphasis had come now 
to the carouser within. He had risen and approached 
the porch window, simulating as he walked an awkward 
limp. 

^^Take a greeting to England, you globe-trotters! 
Greeting from Venice, the sea-Sodom, to London 1 Hell 
is not paved with its good intentions. Slabs of lava, 
with its parsons^ damned souls for cement, make a bet- 
ter causeway for Satan^s corso r 

Again he turned to his fellows in the tap-room: 

I shu^ it will be like the rascals to dump 


THE CASTAWAY 


267 


me into Westminster Abbey. If they do, 1^11 save them 
the trouble of the epitaph. Fve written it myself: 

“George Gordon lies here, peer of Nottinghamshire, 
Wed, parted and banished inside of a year. 

The marriage he made, being too much for one. 

He could not carry off — so he’s now carri-onT* 

^^Westminster Abbey !’’ said a man’s bass in disgust. 

Gordon’s left hand reached and grasped the sill. His 
face was convulsed. His right hand went to his breast 
pocket. 

At that instant, from behind him, a touch fell on 
his arm and stayed it. ^^A letter. Excellence.” 

He turned with a long, shuddering breath, and took 
what Tita handed him. 

understand, Tita,” he answered, with an efforl. 
The other nodded and disappeared. 

For a moment Gordon stood motionless. Then he 
passed from the arbor, through the hedges, to the spot 
whither the gondolier had led him two hours before. 
He sat down on the turf and buried his face in his 
hands. 

He had scarcely known what shapeless lurid thing 
had leaped up in his soul as he gazed through the win- 
dow, but the touch on his arm had told him. For the 
moment the pressure had seemed Teresa’s hand, as he 
had felt it on the path at San Lazzarro, when the same 
red mist had swum before his eyes. Then it had roused 
a swift sense of shame ; now the memory did more. The 
man yonder he had injured. There had been a deed of 
shame and dastard cowardice years before in Greece — 
yet what had he to do with the boy’s act? By what 


268 


THE CASTAWAY 


right had he, that night in Geneva, judged the other’s 
motive toward Jane Clermont? Had his own been so 
pure a one then? Because of a fancied wrong, Tre- 
vanion had dogged him to Switzerland. Because of a 
real one he dogged him now. 

After a time Gordon raised his head and stared out 
into the moonlight. ‘Tt is past,” he said aloud and 
with composure. ‘Tt shall never tempt me again! 
What comes to me thus I myself have beckoned. I will 
not try to avert it by vengeance. The Great Mechanism 
that mixed the elements in me to make me what I am, 
shall have its way 1” 

He rose slowly and walked back toward the osteria. 
A groom was washing out the empty diligence. He sent 
him for his horse, and in a few moments was in the sad- 
dle, riding toward Venice through the silent, glimmer- 
ing streets of Eavenna. 

A new, nascent tenderness was in him. He was riding 
from her, the one woman he loved — to see her when and 
where ? Should he ever see her again ? She might have 
hope of relief in the letter he carried, but who could tell 
if it would succeed? And in the meantime she was 
alone, as she had been alone before. 

He rode on, his chin sunk on his breast, scarcely ob- 
serving a coach with six white horses, that passed him, 
driven in the opposite direction. 


CHAPTEK XXXYII 

TREVANIOIT FINDS AN ALLY 

Trevanion, the drunkenness slipped from his face 
and the irksome limp discarded, came from the osteria 
door. His audience dwindled, he was minded for fresh 
air and a stroll. Behind the red glow of his segar his 
dark face wore a smile. 

Just at the fringe of the foliage two stolid figures in 
servant’s livery stepped before him. Startled, he drew 
back. Two others stood behind him. He looked from 
side to side, pale with sudden anticipation, his lips 
drawn back like a lynx at bay. He was weaponless. 

A fifth figure joined the circle that hemmed him — 
Paolo, suave, smiling, Corsican. 

^^Magnificence !” he said, in respectful Italian, bear 
the salutations of a gentleman of Eavenna who begs 
your presence at his house to-night.” Without waiting 
answer, he called softly, and a coach with six white 
horses drew slowly from the shadow. 

For an instant Trevanion smiled in grim humor, half 
deceived. A simultaneous movement of the four in 
livery, however, recalled his distrust. 

^^Are these his bravos ? ” he inquired in surly defiance. 

^^His servants. Magnificence !” 

( 369 ) 


270 


THE CASTAWAY 


^^Carry my excuses then — and bid him mend the man- 
ner of his invitations/^ 

should regret to have to convey such a message 
(from the milord/^ Paolo opened the coach door as he 
Jspoke. The inference was obvious. 

Trevanion glanced swiftly over his shoulder toward 
the still hostelry. His first sound of alarm might easily 
be throttled. At any rate/ he refiected, these were not 
the middle ages. To the owner of this equipage he was 
an English lord, and lords were not kidnapped and 
stilettoed, even in Italy. Some wealthy Ravennese, per- 
haps, not openly to fiout public disapproval, chose thus 
to gratify his curiosity. Anticipating refusal, he had 
taken this method of urbane constraint. Well, perforce, 
he would see the adventure through ! He shrugged his 
shoulders and entered the coach. 

Paolo seated himself, and the horses started at a 
swinging trot. Through the windows Trevanion could 
discern the forms of the men-servants running along- 
side. He sat silent, his companion vouchsafing no re- 
mark, till the carriage stopped and they alighted at the 
open portal of a massive structure fronting the paved 
street. It was Casa Guiccioli. 

The Corsican led the way in and the servants dis- 
appeared. With a word, Paolo also vanished, and the 
man so strangely introduced gazed about him. 

The hall was walled with an arras tapestry of faded 
antique richness, hung with uncouth weapons. Opposite 
ascended a broad, dimly lighted stairway holding niches 
of tarnished armor. Wealth with penuriousness showed 
everywhere. Could this whimsical duress be the audac- 
ity of some self-willed dama, weary of her cavalierex 


THE CASTAWAY 


271 


servente and scheming thus to gain a romantic tete-d^ 
tete with the famed and defamed personage he had cari- 
catured that day? Trevanion stole softly to the arras, 
wrenched a Malay kriss from a clump of arms, and 
slipped it under his coat. 

A moment later his guide reappeared. Up the stair, 
along a tiled and gilded hall, he followed him to a wide 
stanza. A door led from this at which Paolo knocked. 

As it opened, the compelled guest caught a glimpse of 
the interior, set with mirrors and carven furniture, 
panelled and ornate with the delicate traceries of brush 
and chisel. In the room stood two figures : a man bent 
from age, his face blazing with the watch-fires of an 
unbalanced purpose, and a woman, young, lovely, dis- 
traught. She wore a dressing-gown, and her gold hair 
fell uncaught about her shoulders, as though she had 
been summoned in haste to a painful audience. Her 
eyes, on the man, were fixed in an expression of fearful 
wonder. One hand was pressed hard against her heart. 
Trevanion had never seen either before; what did they 
want with him ? 

^TTour guesV^ announced Paolo on the threshold. 

^^What do you mean to do cried the girl in frantic 
fear. is a noble of England ! You dare not harm 
him !” 

"I am a noble of Eomagna !” grated the old man. 

It was the real George Gordon they expected — ^not he ! 
Trevanion was smiling as Paolo spoke to him. With a 
hand on the blade he concealed he strode forward, past 
him, into the room. 

^^our servant. Signore,” said he, as the door closed 
behind him. 


272 


THE CASTAWAY 


There was a second of silence, broken by a snarl 
from the old count and a cry from Teresa — a sob of 
relief. She leaned against the wall, in the reaction 
suddenly faint. Her husband’s summons had filled her 
with apprehension — for she recalled the sound in the 
shrubbery — and his announcement, full of menace to 
Gordon, had shaken her mettle of resistance. She re- 
membered an old story of a hired assassin whispered of 
him when she was a child. At the insane triumph and 
excitement in his manner she had been convinced and 
frightened. Terror had seized her anew — the shivering 
terror of him that had come to her on the monastery 
path and that her after-resentment had allayed. 

How, however, her fear calmed, indignation at what 
she deemed a ruse to compel an admission of concern 
that had but added to her husband’s fury, sent the blood 
back to her cheeks. All the repressed feeling that his 
cumulative humiliations had aroused burst their bonds. 
She turned on him with quivering speech : 

'"Evviva, Signore r she said bitterly. ^^Are you not 
proud to have frightened a woman by this valorous 
trick? Have you other comedies to garnish the even- 
ing? Non importa — I leave them for your guest.” 

Trevanion’s face wore a smile of relish as she swept 
from the room. He was certain now of two things. The 
old man hated George Gordon; the girl — was she 
daughter or wife? — did not. Had he unwittingly 
stumbled upon a chapter in the life of the man he 
trailed which he had not known? He seated himself 
with coolness, his inherent dare-deviltry flaunting to 
the surface. 

Through the inflamed brain of the master of the casa. 


THE CASTAWAY 


273 


as he stared at him with his hawk eyes, were crowding 
suspicions. Paolo’s description had made him certain 
of the identity of the man in the garden. But his com- 
mand to his secretary had named only the milord at 
the osteria. That the two were one and the same, Paolo 
could not have known — otherwise he would not have 
brought another. But how had he been deceived ? How, 
unless the man before him was a confederate — had 
played the other’s part at the inn? It was a decoy, so 
the lover of his wife, with less risk in the amour, might 
laugh in his sleeve at him, the hoodwinked husband, the 
richest noble in Eomagna ! His lean fingers twitched. 

‘^May I ask,” he queried, wetting his lips, ^%hat the 
real milord — who is also in town to-day — ^pays you for 
filling his place to-night ?” 

Possessed as he was, his host could not mistake the 
other’s unaffected surprise. Before the start he gave, 
suspicion of collusion shredded thin. 

^^He is in Venice,” said Trevanion. 

^‘He came to Eavenna this afternoon.” 

His enemy there ? Trevanion remembered the laugh 
of the woman in the wagonette. Jane Clermont had 
mocked him ! She lied ! She had come there to meet 
Gordon. Vicious passion gathered on his brow, signs 
readily translatable, that glozed the old man’s anger 
with dawning calculation. 

^TTou have acted another’s role to-night,” Count 
Guiccioli said, leaning across the table, ^^and done it 
well, I judge, for my secretary is no fool. I confess to a 
curiosity to know why you chose to appear as the milord 
for whom I waited.” 

Trevanion’s malevolence leaped in his answer: ^^e- 


274 


THE CASTAWAY 


cause I hate him! And hate him more than you! In 
Italy I can add to the reputation he owns already in 
England! I want his name to blacken and blister 
wherever it is spoken ! That’s why !” 

The count made an exclamation, as through his fe- 
vered blood the idea of the truth raced swiftly. The 
town loungers had gaped at the osteria to see the ca- 
rousal of the milord — so Paolo had said. Why, it was 
as good as a play ! He smiled — and thought further : 

The Englishman had been in Kavenna and had 
eluded his grasp. Here before him was youth, clever 
and unscrupulous ; if less cunning, yet bolder — a hatred 
antedating his own — a ready tool. Who could tell to 
what use such an ally might be put? The suggestion 
fascinated him. He laughed a splintered treble as he 
rang the bell sharply for his secretary. 

^‘A bottle of Amontillado!” he commanded. ^^My 
good Paolo, we drink a health to the guest of the casa.” 

As the secretary disappeared Trevanion drew the 
kriss from beneath his coat and handed it to its owner. 
‘^A pretty trifle,” he said coolly; took the liberty of 
admiring it as I waited. I quite forgot to replace it.” 

^^My dear friend!” protested the count, pushing it 
back across the table, rejoice that you should fancy 
one of my poor possessions ! I pray you accept it. Who 
knows? You may one day find a use for the play- 
thing!” 


They sat late over the wine. They were still con- 
versing when a window in the casa overlooking the 
garden opened and Teresa’s face looked out. Her 
straining emotions had left her trembling. Who was 


THE CASTAWAY 


275 


the swarthy, fierce-eyed man ? At the first sight of him 
she had felt an instinctive recoil. 

But her puzzle fell away as she gazed out into the soft 
night with its peace and somnolent incense. From the 
garden below, where she and Gordon had sat, came the 
beat of a night-bird bending the poppies. Overhead tiny 
pale clouds drifted like cherry-blossoms in the breeze. 
Far off the moon dropped closer to the velvet clasp of 
the legend-haunted hills. To-night, foreboding seemed 
treason while her heart held that one meeting, as the 
sky the stars, inalienable, eternal. Gordon was safe, on 
his way to Venice, and with him was her letter — on 
which hung her hope for a papal separation, — all that 
was possible under the seneschalship of Eome. 

At length she closed the shutter, knelt at the ivory 
crucifix that hung in a corner of the raftered chamber, 
and crept into bed. 

She fell asleep with a curl — ^the one he had kissed— 
drawn across her lips. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


THE HEART OF A WOMAN 

Prom the coming of Gordon on that unforgettable 
night to the garden, Teresa^s pulse began to beat more 
tumultuously. To offset the humiliation of her daily 
life indoors and the tireless surveillance in the person of 
Paolo of well-nigh her every excursion, she had the 
buoyant memory of that hour and the promise of her 
appeal to the Churches favor. The three essentials of 
woman’s existence — ^love, hope and purpose — ^were now 
hers in spite of all. 

More than one new problem perturbed her. There was 
the swarthy visitor coming and going mysteriously, 
closeted with her husband weekly. His strange entrance 
into the casa that day of all days — ^the stranger ruse that 
had been practised through him upon her — seemed to 
connect him in some occult, uncanny way with the man 
of whom, every hour of day and night, she mused and 
dreamed. Thinking of this, and weighing her husband’s 
hatred, at first she hoped Gordon would not return to 
Ravenna. 

There had befallen another matter, too, which seemed 
to have absorbed much of the old count’s attention, and 
( 276 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


m 


which, to her relief, took him from the city for days at 
a time. 

Teresa knew what this matter was. In every visit to 
her father he had talked of it triumphantly — the rising 
of the Italian peoples and the breaking of the galling 
yoke of Austria. During this spring strange rumors had 
prevailed. Twice, morning had found placards posted 
on the city walls : ^^Up with the Eepublic and ^‘Down 
with the Pope !” The foreign police were busy ; houses 
were searched and more than one Eavennese was seized 
under suspicion of membership in the Carhonari, 
whose mystic free-masonry hid the secrets of enrolling 
bands and stores of powder. Knowledge of the syco- 
phant part her husband was currently suspected of play- 
ing came to Teresa bit by bit, in sidelong looks, as her 
carriage rolled through the town, and more definitely 
from Tita. The Austrian wind blew strongest and 
Count Guiccioli trimmed his sails accordingly. 

But replete with its one image, Teresa’s heart left 
small space to these things. Gordon’s face flushed her 
whole horizon. And as the empty weeks linked on, she 
began, in spite of her fears, to long passionately to see 
him again. That her letter had reached its destination 
she knew, for the Contessa Albrizzi paused an hour for a 
visit of state at the casa — on her way to Eome. But no 
word came from its bearer, and each day Tita returned 
from the osteria messageless. 

She could not guess the struggle that had tom Gor- 
don — ^the struggle between reasoning conscience and un- 
reasoning desire — or how fiercely, the letter once de- 
livered by Fletcher, he had fought down the longing to 
return to Eavenna, which held his child, and her. He 


278 


THE CASTAWAY 


had been able to aid her once, prompted Desire; she 
might need him again. If he stayed away in her 
trouble, what would she deem him ? Suppose by chance 
she should hear of the orgy he had witnessed at the 
osteria? This reflection maddened him. ^^Yet/’ Eea- 
son answered, ^^not to see her is the only safety. She 
is unhappy now; but can I — ^because life is ended for 
me — ^to bring her present comfort, run the risk of em- 
bittering her life further So he had argued. 

There came a week for Teresa when Paolo was sum- 
moned to Faenza, whither her husband had gone two 
days before. The espionage of the casa relaxed, and on 
her birthday, with Tita on the box, she drove alone 
through the afternoon forest to the Bagnacavallo con- 
vent with a gift for the Mother Superior, the only 
mother her childhood had known. 

When she issued from the gate again she carried her 
birthday gift, a Bible, and a German magazine given her 
by the nun who had taught her that tongue. In her 
heart she bore a far heavier burden, for in that hour she 
had held a child in her arms and listened to a story that 
had sunk into her soul. Her face was deathly white and 
her limbs dragged. 

Calling to Tita to wait, she left the road and climbed 
a path that zigzagged up a wooded knoll overlooking the 
narcissus-scented valley and the hurrying river that 
flowed past the convent walls. The briers tore her 
hands, but she paid no heed, climbing breathlessly. 

The sparser crown of the hillock was canopied by 
shaggy vine-festoons and dappled by the shadow-play of 
firs, whose aged roots were covered with scalloped fun- 
gus growths. As a child this had been her favorite spot. 


THE CASTAWAY 


279 


With one of these giant tree-fungi for a seat she had 
loved to day-dream, gazing down across the convent in- 
closure and the stream that flowed silverly on, past Ea- 
venna, to the sea. She stood a moment knee-deep in the 
bracken, her form tense with suffering, then dropped the 
books on the ground and throwing herself down, burst 
into tears. She wept long and passionately, in utter 
desolation. 

She had listened to the Superior’s story with her face 
buried in the child’s frock, now burning, now drenched 
with cold. The touch had given her a wild delight and 
yet an agony unfathomable. As she lay and wept, ten- 
derness and torture still mingled inextricably in her 
emotions. She knew now why Gordon had been in Ea- 
venna that spring day. He had told the truth; it had 
been with no thought of her. 

A sudden memory of his words in the casa garden 
came with sickening force: ^^By a tie that holds me, 
and by a bond you believe in, I have no right to stand 
here now.” Was this the tie he had meant? Hot the 
unloving wife in England, but the mother of this child 
• — a later, nearer one ? When he had come that once to 
her, was it at best out of pity? Did he love this other 
woman? Was this why she herself had seen him no 
more? 

Before the acute shaft of this pain the facts she 
had learned of his life in London fell unheeded. They 
belonged to that far dim past that he had forsaken 
and that had forsaken him ! But the one fact she knew 
now had to do with his present, here in Italy — ^the pres- 
ent that held her! She was facing for the first time in 
her life the hydra, elemental passion — jealousy. And 


280 


THE CASTAWAY 


in the grip of its merciless talons everything of truth 
in her wavered. 

For a moment she lost hold on her own heart, her 
instinct, her trust in Gordon^s word, the faith that 
had returned to her at San Lazzarro. What if all — 
all — ^what the whole world said, what this magazine 
told of him — ^were true after all, and she, desolate and 
grieving, the only one deceived? What if it were! 
She drew the magazine close to her tear-swollen eyes, 
only to thrust it from her desperately. 

^^No, no!” she said, ^^i^’ot that! It is a lie! I will 
not believe it !” 

In her anguish she sat up, flinging her hat aside, and 
leaned against a tree. Her glance fell on the great saf- 
fron fungus that jutted, a crumpled half-disk, above its 
roots. Into the brittle shiny surface words had been 
etched with a sharp point — Clines in English, almost 
covering it. She began to read the unfamiliar tongue 
aloud, deciphering the words slowly at first, then with 
more confidence: 

‘‘River, that rollest by the ancient walls. 

Where dwells the lady of my love — ^when she 
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls 
A faint and fleeting memory of me — ” 

A color tinged her paleness; she bent closer in a 
startled wonder. 

“What if thy deep and ample stream should be 
A mirror of my heart, where she may read 
A thousand thoughts I now betray to thee. 

Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed! 


THE CASTAWAY 


281 


What do I say — a mirror of my heart? 

Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? 

Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; 

And such as thou art were my passions long. 

And left long wrecks behind, and now again. 

Borne in our old unchanged career, we move; 

Thou tendest wildly onward to the main. 

And I — to loving one I should not love!’* 

She drew herself half-upright with a sob. She was 
not mistaken ! No other could have written those lines, 
rhythmically sad and passionate, touched with abne- 
gation. He had been near her when she had not guessed 
— had been here, in this very nook where she now sat ! 
Eecently, too, for new growth had not blotted the char- 
acters. Her heart beat poignantly : 

“The wave that bears my tears returns no more: 

Will she return, by whom that wave shall sweep? 

Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore, 

I near thy source, she by the dark blue deep. 

She will look on thee, — I have look’d on thee. 

Full of that thought: and from that moment, ne’er 

Thy waters could I dream of, name or see. 

Without the inseparable sigh for her!” 

For whom had he longed when he wrote? For the 
woman whose child — Tiis child, denied him now ! — was 
hidden in the convent below? No! The mist of an- 
guish melted. She felt her bitterness ebbing fast away. 

What else mattered? Nothing! Not what this con- 
vent held ! Not all his past, though even the worst of 
all the tales she had ever heard were true; though what 
the pamphlet at her feet alleged were true a thousand 


282 


THE CASTAWAY 


times over — ^though it were the worst crime of all man 
punished on earth! Nothing, nothing! At this mo- 
ment she knew that, for all the dreams of God bred in 
her, without him, prayers and faiths and life itself went 
for naught as human hearts are made. 

Clasping her hands she read to the end : 

“Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,— 

Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now: 

Mine cannot witness, even in a dream. 

That happy wave repass me in its flow! 

But that which keepeth us apart is not 

Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth, 

But the distraction of a various lot, 

As various as the climates of our birth. 

My blood is all meridian; were it not, 

I had not left my clime, nor should I be 

In spite of tortures ne’er to be forgot, 

A slave again of love, — at least of thee!“ 

Kneeling over the fungus, absorbed, she had not heard 
a quick step behind her. She heard nothing in her 
abandon, till a voice — his voice — spoke her name. 


CHAPTER X:XXIX 


BAKRIEES BURNED AWAY 

Teresa came to her feet with a cry. Her mingled 
emotions were yet so recent that she had had no time to 
recover poise. Gordon^s face was as strangely moved. 
Surprise edged it, but overlapping this was a something 
lambent, desirous, summoned by sight of her tears. 

In the first swift glimpse, through the fern fronds, 
of that agitated form bent above the fungus, he had 
noted the tokens of returning strength — and knew her 
present grief was from some cause nearer than the casa 
in Ravenna. These were not tears of mere womanly 
sensibility, called forth by the lines written there, for 
a shadow of pain was still lurking in her eyes. Was it 
grief for him? He tossed aside gloves and riding-crop 
and drew her to a seat on the warm pine-needles before 
he spoke : 

"I did not imagine your eyes would ever see that!’^ 

She wiped away the telltale drops hastily, feeling a 
guilty relief to think he had misread them. 

^This is an old haunt of mine,^’ she said. loved 
it when I was a girl — only a year ago, how long it 
seems ! — in the convent there 

He started. The fact explained her presence to-day. 
She had known those walls that hid Allegra ! It seemed 
(2S3) 


284 


THE CASTAWAY 


to bring them immeasurably nearer. If he could only 
tell her ! Eeckless, uncaring as she knew a part of his 
past had been, could he bear to show her this concrete 
evidence of its dishonor ? 

Looking up at the pallid comeliness under its slightly 
graying hair, Teresa was feeling a swift, clairvoyant 
sense of the struggle that had kept him from her, with- 
out understanding all its significance. 

am glad I came in time,^^ she continued. ^^A few 
days and the words will show no longer. I shall not 
need them then,” she went on, her face tinted. shall 
know them by heart. As soon as I read the first lines, 
I knew they were yours — ^that you had been here.” 
am stopping at Bologna,” he told her. 

^^Ah, Madonna r she said under her breath. ^^And 
you have been so near Eavenna !” 

^^Better it were a hundred leagues!” he exclaimed. 
^^And yet — distant or near, it is the same. I think of 
you, Teresa! That is my punishment. Every day, as 
I have ridden through the pines, every hour as I have 
sat on this hill — ^and that has been often— I have 
thought of you !” 

knew that” — she was gazing past him to the river 
and the far dusky amethyst of the hills — ^^Vhen I read 
what is on the fungus.” 

Thereafter neither spoke for a moment. A noisy 
cicala droned from a near chestnut bough, and from 
somewhere down the slope came the brooding coo of a 
wood-dove. At length he said : 

^^There were tears on your cheek when I first saw you. 
They were not for the verses, I know.” 

She shook her head slowly. ^Tt was something’^—* 


THE CASTAWAY 


285 


she could not tell him all the truth — ^^something I saw 
in that/^ She pointed to the German magazine. 

He reached and retrieved it, but she put her hand on 
his restrainingly. 

^Ts it about me ?” 

^^es/^ she admitted; ^Ijut — ” 

^^May I not see it 

"Nothing in it really matters,” she entreated. "It 
could never make any difference to me — now! Not 
even if it were true. Your past is as if it belonged to 
some other person I never saw and never can know. 
You believe that ? Tell me you do 1” 

"I do,” he responded; "I do !” 

"Then do not read it.” 

^^But suppose it is false. Either way, I would tell 
you the truth.” 

"That is just it.” Her fingers clasped his on the 
cover. "I know you would. But I do not believe what 
it says! I cannot! You can never have done such 
things ! Ah, is it not enough that I have that trust ? — 
even,” she ended hurriedly, "though it would make no 
difference ?” 

His pulses were beating painfully. He drew her fin- 
gers gently from their hold and opened the magazine 
to a page turned down lengthwise. It was a critique of 
his drama of "Cain” — sole fruit of that last year in Ven- 
ice — which he had himself called ^‘a drama of madness” 
and in sheer mocking bravado had posted to John Mur- 
ray, his publisher. He saw at a glance that the article 
was signed with the name of Germany's greatest mind, 
the famous Goethe. 

She was trembling. ‘‘Remember,” she said earnestly; 


286 


THE CASTAWAY 


have not asked you! I should never have asked 
you 1” 

Gordon translated the cramped text with a strange 
J:urid feeling, like coming in touch with an ancient past : 

, “The character of the author’s life permits with diffi- 
culty a just appreciation of his genius. Scarcely any one 
compassionates the suffering which cries out laboriously in 
his poems, since it arises from the phantoms of his own 
evil acts which trouble him. When a bold and impetuous 
youth, he stole the affections of a Florentine lady of qual- 
ity. Her husband discovered the affair and slew his wife. 
But the murderer on the next night was found stabbed to 
death on the street, nor was there any one save the lover 
on whom it seemed suspicion could attach. The poet re- 
moved from Florence, but these unhappy spirits have 
haunted his whole life since.” 

He raised his eyes from the page. Her face was 
turned away, her hand pulling up the grass-spears in a 
pathetic apprehension. 

^^Teresa,^^ he said in a smothered voice; ^^it is not 
true. I have never been in Florence.’^ 

“1 knew — knew !” she cried, and all her soul looked 
into his. She had not really credited. But the tangible 
. allegation, coming at the moment when her heart was 
wrenched with that convent discovery and warped from 
^ts orbit of instinct, had dismayed and disconcerted her. 
I The balm she had longed for was not proof, it was only 
reassurance. 

He closed the magazine. The feeling that had choked 
his utterance was swelling in his throat. For the rest of 
the world he cared little, but for her ! 

She leaned toward him, her eyes shining. ‘‘1 know 
how you have suffered! You have not deserved it. I 


THE CASTAWAY 


287 


have learned so much, since I saw you last, of your life 
in England 

His tone shook. ^^Have you learned all? That my 
wife left me in the night and robbed me of my child? 
That society shut its doors upon me? That I was 
driven from London like a wild beast — a scapegoat at 
which any man might cast a stone ?^’ 

^TTes,^^ she breathed, ^^all that, and more! I have 
not understood it quite, for our Italy is so different. 
But you have helped me understand it now! It was 
like this.’^ 

She picked up the Bible from where it had fallen 
and turned the pages quickly. ‘^Listen,’^ she said, and 
began to read : 

^^And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats . . • 
But the goat on which the lot fell to he the scape^ 
goat, shall he presented alive before the Lord, to mahe 
an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scape- 
goat into the wilderness, 

**And Aaron shall lay hoth his hands upon the head 
of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities 
of the children of Israel and all their transgressions 
in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the 
goat, and shall send him away hy the hand of a fit 
man into the wilderness. 

^^And the goat shall hear upon him all their ini- 
quities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go 
the goat in the wilderness/* 

He had risen and now stood movelessly before her. 

She looked up as she finished. ‘‘So it was with you.^ 


288 


THE CASTAWAY 


he said in a low voice. ^^And so I have lived 
ever since, a mnrderless Cain with a mark on my brow ! 
So shall I live and die, hated and avoided by all men 

“hTo V’ she contradicted, coming to him. ^^That will 
not be ! I see further and clearer than that ! It is not 
for such an end that you have lived and written and 
suffered! But for something nobler, which the world 
that hates you now will honor ! I see it ! I know it 

^^Stop I” he exclaimed, cannot bear it. I am not 
a murderer, Teresa, but all of the past you forgive with 
such divine compassion, you do not know. There is a 
silence yet to break which I have kept, a chapter unlove- 
ly to look upon that you have not seen.” 
ask nothing !” she interrupted. 

“I must,”, he went on with dry lips. ^TTou shall see 
it all, to the dregs. In that convent, Teresa, — 

She put a hand over his lips. ‘TTou need not. For— 
I already know.” 

He looked in dazed wonder. ^^You know ? And — ^you 
do not condemn ?” 

^^That other woman — do you love her?” 

^'No, Teresa. I have not seen her for two years.” 

^^Did she ever love you ?” 

"Never in her life,” he answered, his face again 
averted. 

Her own was glowing with a strange light. ^Tiook 
at me,” she said softly. 

He turned to her, his eyes — golden-gray like sea- 
weed glimpsed through deep water — cored with a 
hungry, hopeless fire which seemed to transform her 
whole frame to thirsty tinder. 





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THE CASTAWAY 


289 


'^Ah/^ she whispered, you think it could matter, 
then?” 

An overmastering emotion, blent of bitterness and 
longing, surged through him, beating down constraint, 
blotting out all else, all that thrilled him finding its 
way into broken speech. In that moment he forgot 
himself and the past, forgot the present and what the 
convent held — forgot what bound them both — forgot 
grief and danger. London and Venice, Annabel, the 
master of Casa Guiccioli drew far off. There was noth- 
ing but this fragrant, Italian forest, this whispering 
glade above the blue rushing of the arrowy river, this 
sun-drenched afternoon — and Teresa there beside him. 
With an impulse wholly irresistible he caught her to 
him, feeling her form sway toward him with fierce tu- 
multuous gladness. 

"Awor mioT she breathed, and their lips clung into 
a kiss. 

As she strained back in his embrace, letting the tide 
of love ripple over her, looking up into his face in 
desperate joy, something swift and flashing like a sil- 
ver swallow darted through the air. 

It sung between them — a Malay kriss — and struck 
Gordon above the heart. 


CHAPTER XL 


THE OATH OH THE KRISS 

Teresa stood chained with horror — ^the cry frozen on 
her lips. As the silver flash had flown she had seen a 
dark, oriental face disappear between the bracken and 
had recognized it. 

Gordon had shuddered as the blow struck, then stood 
perfectly still, his arms about her. In that instant he 
remembered the scene he had witnessed at the Ravenna 
osteria, and his heart said within him: ^^Hast thou 
found me, 0 mine enemy?” 

Her voice came then in a scream that woke the place 
and brought Tita rushing up the path. 

When he reached them, her Angers had drawn out the 
wet blade and were striving desperately to stanch the 
blood with her handkerchief, as, white to the lips with 
pain, Gordon leaned against a tree. After that flrst cry, 
in which her whole being had sounded its terror, she 
had not spoken. Now she turned to Tita, who stood 
dumfounded. 

^^Tita, quickly! You and I must help his lordship 
to the road. He is wounded.” 

^^Teresa,” — Gordon sought for words through the 
(290y 


THE CASTAWAY 


291 


dizziness that was engulfing him, — ^fieave me. My horse 
is in the edge of the forest. At Bologna I shall find a 
snrgeon.^^ 

^TTou cannot ride. It would kill you. My carriage 
is near the convent gate.” 

He shook his head. ^Y'ou have risked enough for me. 
Tita,— ” 

^^He can bring the horse around,” she answered. 
^^Come!” She drew one of Gordon’s arms about her 
shoulder, feeling him waver. ^That is right — so !” 

With Tita on the other side, they began the descent. 
She walked certainly along the difficult path, though 
every nerve was thrilling with agony, her mind one in- 
cessant clamor. At the expense of his own heart he had 
stayed away. And this was what their chance meeting 
to-day had brought him. This ! 

Gordon was breathing hard at the foot of the hill. 
He had fought desperately to retain consciousness, but 
a film was clouding his eyes. 

‘Tt is only a few steps now,” she said, ^^to the car- 
riage.” 

He stopped short. 

‘TTou must obey me,” she insisted wildly, her voice vi- 
brating. ^Tt is the only way! You must go to Ea- 
venna !” 

^^Tita — ^bring my horse !” 

It was the last stubborn flash of the will, fainting in 
physical eclipse. With the words his hand fell heavily 
from her shoulder and Tita caught him in his arms. 

At a sign from Teresa, the servant lifted him into the 
carriage. 

^^Home !” she commanded, ^^and drive swiftly.” 


292 


THE CASTAWAY 


Throngli the miles of rapid motion under the ebon 
shadows deepening to twilight she sat chafing Gordon^s 
hands, her eyes, widened with a great suspense, upon the 
broadening stain crimsoning his waistcoat. 

In that interminable ride her soul passed through a 
furnace of transformation. The touch of his lips upon 
^ hers had been the one deathless instant of lifers unfold- 
ing. In that kiss she had felt poured out all the virginal 
freshness of a love renaissant and complete, no more to 
be withheld than a torrent leaping to the sea. But the 
awful instant that followed, with its first glimpse into 
the hideous limbo of possibilities, showed her all else 
that might lie in that love, of the irreparable, the disas- 
trous, the infinitely terrifying. Her marriage had been 
a baleful bond of ring and book, seasoned with hate, 
empty of sanctity. His had been sunk somewhere in the 
black slough of the past, a stark dead thing. That they 
two should love each other — she had imagined no fur- 
ther. She had known her own heart, but that hour on 
the hill had been the complete surety that Gordon loved 
her fully in return. 

Born of his extremity, there swelled in her now the 
wondrous instinct of the lioness that is a part of every 
woman’s love. It lent her its courage. All fear, save the 
one surpassing dread that gnawed her heart, slipped 
' from her. 

Dark fell before they reached the town, and in the 
quiet street the freight of the carriage was not noted. 
Before the entrance of Casa Guiccioli stood her father’s 
chaise. 

Count Gamba met her in the hall, to start at her 
strained look and at the pallid face of the man Tita 


THE CASTAWAY 


293 


carried — a face unknown to him. Paolo was behind 
him ; by this she knew her husband was returned. 

She scarcely heeded her father’s ejaculations. ‘'Bring 
linen and water quickly to the large chamber in the gar- 
den wing,” she directed, “and send for Doctor Aglietti.^ 

Paolo went stealthily to inform his master. 

When Count Guiccioli crossed the threshold of the 
candle-lighted room he came upon a strange scene. Te- 
resa bent over the bed, her face colorless as a mask. Her 
father, opposite, to whom she had as yet told nothing, 
was tying a temporary bandage. Between them lay the 
inert form of the man against whom his own morbid 
rage had been amassing. His eyes flared. Where had 
she found him? Had Trevanion bungled or betrayed? 
Did she guess? And guessing, had she brought him to 
this house, in satanic irony, to die before his very sight ? 

At the suspicion the fever of his moody eyes flew to 
his face. His countenance became distorted. He burst 
upon them with a crackling exclamation: “The Vene- 
tian dog ! Who has dared fetch him here ?” 

**Zittor said Count Gamba pettishly. “Don’t you 
see the man is wounded ?” 

“Wounded or whole, by the body of Bacchus! He 
shall go back to-night to Bologna !” He took a menac- 
ing step forward. 

“How did you know he was lodged there ?” 

Teresa’s steely inquiry stayed him. She had lifted 
her face, calm as a white moon. He stopped, non- 
plussed. 

“You had good reason to know.” She drew from her 
belt a Malay kriss, its blade stained with red. “This 


294 


THE CASTAWAY 


is what struck him. It belonged to you. Am I to 
learn what it means to bear the name of a murderer 

Her father stared his amazement. ^"Dio santissimo 
he exclaimed. Was this why she had been so pale? 

Before her movement her husband had shrunk invol« 
untarily. knew nothing of it,^’ he said in a muffled 
fury; H am just come from Faenza.” 

saw whose hand struck the blow.’^ She spoke with 
deadly quietness. have seen him more than once un- 
der this roof. But whose was the brain? Who fur- 
nished him this weapon? It was gone from the arras 
the day after you brought him to the casa to be your 
sicario — ^to do what you dared not do yourself ! Fool 
Her voice rose. ^‘Do you think a peer of England com- 
mon clay for your clean-handed bravos? Are English 
nobles stabbed abroad without an accounting to the last 
soldo? Do you suppose no Romagnan noble ever went 
to the fortress with confiscate estates ? Is your reputa- 
tion so clean that if he dies you think to escape what I 
shall say?” 

A greenish hue had overspread the fiery sallow of the 
old count’s face, ghastly under the candles. She had 
touched two vulnerable points at once — cupidity and 
fear. Something, too, in what she said brought a swift 
unwelcome memory. He recalled another — a poet, also 
— Manzoni, the Italian, dead by a hired assassin in 
Forli years before; in the night sometimes still that 
man’s accusing look came before him. Beads of sweat 
started on his forehead. 

^‘^Cheeks of the Virgin!” cried Count Gamba, who 
had maintained a rigid silence. ^^Have you no word to 
this?” 


THE CASTAWAY 


395 


was her lover ! She knew where to find him to- 
day. It is not the first time. He was her lover before 
I married her.^^ 

The other^s hands clenched. Teresa’s accusation had 
astonished and shocked him. But as he saw that cower- 
ing look, speaking its own condemnation, he credited 
for the first time the story of that other slain man. At 
this affront, his gaunt, feeble form straightened with all 
the dignity and pride of his race. 

Teresa’s answer rang with a subtle, electric energy. 
^^That is false ! You never asked — ^you only accused. 
Believing all falsehood of me, you have made every day 
of my life in your house a separate purgatory. I have 
kept silent thus long, even to my father. How I speak 
before him. Father,” she said with sudden passion, 
^^he has believed this since my wedding day. There is 
scarcely an hour since then that he has not heaped in- 
sult and humiliation upon me. I will bear it no longer I 
I have already appealed to the Curia.” 

Her eyes transfixed her husband, ‘‘^By the law I may 
not leave your roof to nurse this man, so I have brought 
him here. What you have believed of myself and of 
him is false. But now, if you will hear the truth, I will 
tell you ! I do love him ! I love him as I love my life — 
and more, the blessed Virgin knows! — a million times 
more !” 

As she spoke her passion made her beauty extraordi- 
nary. It smote her father with appealing force and 
with a pang at his own ambitious part in her wedding. 
He had thought of rank and station, not of her happi- 
ness. 


296 


THE CASTAWAY. 


^^You shall answer to me. Count, for this!’^ lie said 
sternly. 

^^Ho, father!’^ 

Count Camba looked at her qnestioningly. He faced 
Count Gniccioli as Teresa went on : 

^^This is what I demand. If he lives he shall stay 
here till he is well. Hot as a guest; he would accept no 
hospitality from this house. He shall hold this wing 
of the casa under rental.’’ 

There was a moment’s pause. 

^^So be it.” The assent was grudging and wrathful. 

^^One thing more. So long as he is in the casa you 
will cause him no physical harm — ^neither you nor your 
servants.” 

While he hesitated a sound came from the bed. Gor- 
don’s eyes were open; they held faint but conscious 
knowledge. 

From the abyss of nothingness those voices had called 
to him, like conversation in a dream. Sight had opened 
more fully and he had stared at the gilded rafters, puz- 
zled. This was not the Hotel Pellegrino in Bologna. 
He stirred and felt a twinge of pain. With the voices 
grown articulate, it came flashing back — ^that one kiss; 
the flying dart of agony ; the dizzy descent ; Tita and — 
Teresa. He suddenly saw a face: the old man at San 
Lazzarro, Teresa’s husband! He shut his eyes to drive 
away the visions, and her clear tones called them wide 
again. 

He heard fully and understanding^ then ; knew that 
Trevanion and Count Guiccioli had made common cause ; 
realized the courage with which Teresa had brought 
him to her husband’s casa — all with a bitter-sweet pain 


THE CASTAWAY 


297 


of helplessness and protest against the logic of circum- 
stances that had thrust him into the very position that 
by all arguments looking to her ultimate happiness he 
must have avoided. He heard her voice demand that 
grudging promise of his safety. It was then he had 
moaned — less with physical than mental pain. 

Teresa leaned to the bed, where Gordon had lifted 
himself on his elbow. The effort dislodged the bandage 
and its edges reddened swiftly. He strove to speak, but 
the effort sickened him and he fell back on the pillows. 

Teresa turned again upon Count Guiccioli. ^^Swear 
it, or all I know Eavenna shall know to-morrow 1’^ She 
held the kriss toward him, hilt up, like a Calvary, and 
half involuntarily his bent fingers touched his breast, 
swear,’^ he said in a stifled voice. 

^‘Father, you hear ?” 

am witness,” said Count Gamba grimly. 


CHAPTER XLl 


ASHES OF DENIAL 

Days went by. Summer was merging into full- 
bosomed autumn of turquoise heavens, more luscious fo- 
liage and ripening olives. 

Gordon’s wound had proven deep, but luckily net 
too serious, thanks to a rough fragment of stone in his 
pocket, which the surgeon declared had turned the heavy 
blade, and which Teresa had covered with secret kisses 
and put carefully away. But to his weakness from loss 
of blood, a tertian ague had added its high temperature, 
and strength had been long in returning. 

He had hours of delirium when Teresa and Fletcher 
— whom Tit a had brought from Bologna with Gordon’s 
belongings — alternately sat by his bedside. Sometimes, 
^ then, he dictated strange yet musical stanzas which she 
;^was able to set down. It was a subconscious bubbling 
up from the silt-choked well of melody within him: a 
clouded rivulet, finding an unused way along turgid 
channels of fever. 

More often Gordon seemed to be fiving again in his 
old life — ^with Hobhouse in the Greece that he had 
loved — in London at White’s club with Beau Brummell, 
or with Sheridan or Tom Moore at the Cocoa-Tree. At 
( 298 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


299 ' 


such times Teresa seemed to comprehend all his striv- 
ings and agonies, and wept tears of pity and yearning. 

Often, too, he muttered of Annabel and Ada, and then 
the fierce jealousy that had once before come to her as- 
sailed her anew. It was not a jealousy now, however, 
of any one person; it was a stifling, passionate resent- 
ment of that past of his into which she could not enter, 
lying instinct and alive in some locked chamber of his 
brain to defy and outwit her. 

Early in his betterment a subtle inducement not to 
hasten the going he knew was inevitable ambushed Gor- 
don. He found folded in his ■writing tablet a six 
months’ lease of the apartments he occupied. The sig- 
nature was his own, added, he readily guessed, during 
his fever. The stupendous rental with which the old 
count had comforted his covetous soul was a whet to the 
temptation. The thought to which he yielded, how- 
ever, was the reflection that to depart without show- 
ing himself to Eavenna — whose untravelled gossips had 
made of his illness at the casa a topic of interest — ^would 
neither conceal the real situation nor make easier Te- 
resa’s position. He prolonged his stay, therefore, riding 
with her at the hour of the corso in the great coach and 
six, and later appearing at the conversazioni of the vice- 
legate’s and at the provincial opera, to hear the ^^Barber 
of Seville” or Alfieri’s ^Tilippo.” 

One day a child in Teresa’s care rode from the con- 
vent of Bagnacavallo to a father whom she had never 
seen, and thereafter Gordon saw with less kaleidoscopic 
clearness the walls of the fool’s paradise fate was rear- 
ing, brick by brick. 

So the long weeks of convalescence dropped by like 


300 


THE CASTAWAY 


falling* leaves. In spite of the constrained oath he had 
heard on a certain night in his chamber, Gordon more 
than once wondered grimly what hour a stiletto might 
end it all. That Teresa guarded well, he realized once 
with a sudden thrill, when he opened the door of his 
bedroom in the night to find Titans great form stretched 
asleep across the threshold. 

The master of the casa, meanwhile, was seldom to be 
seen. When he encountered Gordon, it was with snarling, 
satiric courtesy — a bitter, armed armistice. Teresa did 
not doubt he had been more than once to Home, but what 
effect his visit might have on her petition she could not 
guess. The Contessa Albrizzi was powerful, but he was 
an influential factor also. If her plea were granted, 
well and good. If not, at least she was happy now. And 
because she was happy now, she thrust away, with a 
woman’s fatuousness, the thought that there must come 
a time when Gordon would go. 

Trevanion Gordon met but once, and then with Pa- 
olo at the casa entrance. A single steady look had hung 
between them. The other’s eyes shifted and he passed 
in. Teresa was with Gordon at the moment and her 
hand had trembled on his arm. She said nothing, but 
that night he came upon Tita in his bedroom, oiling his 
pocket-pistols — ^which he did not wear. 

What he had said once as he fought down the pas- 
sion of murder in his soul recurred to him as he laid 
them away: ^^What comes to me thus, I myself have 
beckoned. The Great Mechanism shall have its way.” 
If Trevanion then had seemed the Nemesis of his past, 
he seemed doubly so now. The vengeance had fallen just 
when the cup of joy was at his lips — ^in that one supreme 


THE CASTAWAY 


301 


moment: fate’s red reminder that the moment was not 
his, but filched from his own resolve and from Teresa’s 
peace. 

But thotlgh he struck not openly Gordon was soon 
to discover that Trevanion’s hand was unwearied ; Shel- 
ley came to him from Pisa, bringing report of fresh 
fictions afioat in the London press: his pasha-like resi- 
dence on the island of Mitylene, and his romantic voy- 
ages to Sicily and Ithaca. These Gordon heard with a 
new sting, named as his companion the Contessa Guicci- 
oli, who, it was stated in detail, had been sold to him by 
her husband. 

Not that Gordon cared, for himself. Save as they 
might have power to hurt her, that kiss on the convent- 
hill, when it sweetened the bitterness that had fallen 
in that hour, had burned away the barb from all such 
canards. All that signified was Teresa — from whom he 
must soon part. 

Parting : that was the sting ! Coiled in it was a reali- 
zation that in every conscious moment since that stab- 
bing thrust in the forest had been rankling with grow- 
ing pain. It was, that his own weakness had made with- 
drawal from her life an infinitely crueler thing, had 
made his elimination at one time less possible and more 
necessitous. That kiss had changed the universe for 
them both. For either of them, bound or free, nothing 
could ever be the same again ! 

Sleepless and battling, the night after Shelley’s visit, 
Gordon asked himself fiercely why, after all, life might 
not go on for them still the same. Was it Ms fault? 
Had Tie created these conditions that separated them? 
What did either he or she owe this old man who hated 


302 


THE CASTAWAY 


her and had tried to take his life? Hereafter, would 
not her existence alone with him in the casa be a more 
intolerable thing than ever? He, Gordon, could rob 
him of nothing he now possessed or had ever possessed. 
Besides, in time — ^who could tell how soon? — changes 
must inevitably occur. In the natural course, her hus- 
band would die. Then Teresa would, in truth, be free. 

He paused in his interminable pace and groaned 
aloud. What then? For himself there could be no re- 
tracing of steps. Whatever the issues to him and to her, 
he could not go back to England, invoke the law and free 
himself. When he had quitted London, life — ^the life of 
wife and home — ^had seemed ended. He had thought 
only of Ada, his child, when he had signed that paper 
which put it forever out of his power alone to break the 
tie which bound him to Annabel. Between him and 
Teresa reared the law, a cold brazen wall between two 
hearts of fire. cannot he said. ^^The old tie holds. 
It is too late! Because one woman’s pitiless pureness 
has ruined me, shall I ruin another woman’s pitying 
purity?” 

So while the dark wore away to dawn, his thought be- 
gan and ended with the same desolate cry. 

As the first light came through the windows, he blew 
out the candles. He must go — though it shut him again 
from sight of Allegra — ^though it meant forever. 


CHAPTER XLII 


GORDON TELLS A STORY 

Gordon threw the window wide. The sun had broken 
through the mist, the lilies were awake in their beds, and 
the acacias were shaking the dew from their solemn har- 
monies of green and olive. How sweet the laurel 
smelled ! 

A long time he stood there. At length he turned into 
the room. He collected his smaller belongings for 
Fletcher to pack, then drew out a portmanteau. It was 
filled with books and loose manuscript, gathered by the 
valet when he had removed from Venice. 

As he re-read the pages, Gordon fiushed with a sense 
of shame. Full of beauty as they were, would Shelley 
have written them? Or would Teresa, who treasured 
one book of his and had loved those simple lines etched 
on the fungus, read these with like approval ? 

An aching dissatisfaction — a fiery recrudescent dis- 
taste seized him. He rolled the leaves together and de- 
scended to the garden. At the base of a stone sun-dial 
he set the roll funnel-shape and knelt to strike a light. 

He had not seen Teresa nor heard her approach till 
she caught his arm. 

^^What is it you burn ?” she asked. 


304 


THE CASTAWAY 


^^The beginning of a poem I wrote a long time ago, 
named ‘Don Juan’.” 

“May I read it first?” 

He shook his head. ‘Tt is not worthy.” 

She looked at him seriously, striving to translate his 
thought, and with a sudden impulse, stooped and picked 
up the roll. “Do not destroy it,” she said; “one day 
you will finish it — more worthily.” 

He hesitated a moment, then thrust the manuscript 
into his pocket and followed her to the bench where 
they had sat the night Tita had led him to the columned 
gate, and how many gilded days since ! With what words 
should he tell her what he must say? 

He saw that she held in her hand a small rough frag- 
ment of stone. 

“What is that ?” he questioned, trying to speak lightly. 
“A jewel?” 

A change passed over her face and she raised the stone 
to her lips. “Yes,” she answered; “do you not recognize 
it?” 

As he looked at it curiously, she added : “It was in 
your pocket that day on the convent hill. You never 
missed it, did you? The kriss” — she shuddered as she 
spoke — “struck it. See — ^here is the mark. It saved 
your life.” 

Wondering, he took it from her hand. “Strange!” 
he said, as he handed it back. “It is a piece of the 
tomb of Juliet which I got long ago in Verona.” 

“Juliet?” she repeated, and dropped the stone on the 
bench between them, coloring. “Did you — care for 
her?” 

The feminine touch in tone and gesture brought Gor- 


THE CASTAWAY 


305 


don at one time a smile and a pang. It had not oc- 
curred to him that Shakespeare could be unknown to 
her. ^^All Englishmen love her/^ he said gravely; ^^she 
was one of the great lovers of the world. She died five 
hundred years ago.^^ 

Her face was fiushed more deeply now. "Will you 
tell me about her 

Sitting there, the revelation of the early morning 
enfolding them, he told her the undying story of those 
tragic loves and deaths that the great Anglo-Saxon gave 
to all ages. 

"There were two noble families in Verona,” he be- 
gan, "who for generations had been at enmity — ^the 
Capulets and the Montagues. Juliet was the daughter^ 
of Lord Capulet. She was so beautiful her fame went 
throughout the country. Borneo, scion of the house of 
Montague, heard of her beauty, and to see it, went 
masked to a fete given by her father. Among the Vero- 
nese ladies, he saw one who shone amid the splendor 
like a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear. They danced together, 
and he kissed her hand. Not till they parted did either 
know the other was an enemy. That night, Borneo, 
unable to stay from the house where he had left his 
heart, scaled the wall of its garden and they plighted 
troth upon her balcony. Next day they were secretly 
married by a monk whom Borneo had prevailed upon. 

"There had been one, however, who, beneath his mask, 
recognized the uninvited guest — a nephew of Lord 
Capulet himself. He kept silence then, but the day of 
the marriage he met Borneo, forced a quarrel, and was 
killed by him. For this, Borneo was sentenced to ban- 
ishment. That night he gained Juliet’s chamber from 


306 


THE CASTAWAY 


the garden. Only these few hours were theirs ; at dawn 
he fled to Mantua, till the monk could make public their 
marriage. 

^^Lord Capulet meanwhile had selected another for 
Juliet’s husband and bade her prepare for the nuptials. 
She dared not tell the truth, and in her extremity ap- 
pealed to the monk. He counselled her to consent to her 
father’s plans, and on the night before the marriage to 
drink the contents of a phial he gave her. The potion, 
he told her, would cause a death-like trance, in which 
apparently lifeless state she should be laid in the family 
vault. Thither he would bring Borneo in the night and 
she should awaken in his arms.” 

Teresa’s eyes had grown brighter. The lovers’ meet- 
ing among the maskers, the garden trothing and the 
constrained marriage seemed somehow to flt her own 
case. She leaned forward as he paused. ^^And she 
took the potion ?” 

^Yes. Love and despair gave her courage. It hap- 
pened partly as the monk had said. But unluckily the 
news that Juliet was dead travelled to Mantua faster 
than his letters. Borneo heard, and heart-broken, came 
to Verona at midnight, broke open her tomb and swal- 
lowed poison by her side. A few moments later she 
awoke, saw the cup in his hand, and, guessing how it 
had befallen, unsheathed the dagger he wore and died 
also by her own hand. So the monk found them, and 
over their bodies the lords of Capulet and Montague 
healed the feud of their houses.” 

The bruised petals of a rose Teresa had plucked flut- 
tered down. ^^How she loved him !” she said softly. 

He remembered that among the volumes in the port- 


THE CASTAWAY 


307 


manteau he had opened had been the ^^omeo and 
Juliet,” which he had put into his pocket the night he 
left England. have the book,” he said rising; 
will give it to you.” 

He went back under the flowering trees to fetch it. 
^^This one hour,” his heart was repeating; ^^this last 
hour ! Then I will tell her.” 

He was gone but a few moments. When he came 
down the stair she was in the hall. He paused, for a 
man who had just dismounted at the casa entrance 
stood before her. Gordon saw Teresa sink to her knees, 
saw the other make the sign above her head as he hand- 
ed her a letter, saw him mount and ride away ; saw her 
read and crush it to her breast. What did it mean? 
The man had worn the uniform of a nuncio of the papal 
see. Had the Contessa Albrizzi succeeded ? 

Teresa turned from the entrance and saw him. 

^^Here is the book,” he said. 

She took it blankly. Suddenly she thrust the letter 
into his hands. ^^Kead it,” she whispered. 

It was the pope’s decree. Teresa was free, if not 
from the priestly bond, at least so far as actions went. 
Eree to leave Casa Guiccioli and to live under her fa- 
ther’s roof — free as the law of Church and land could 
make her. But that was not all. The decree had its 
conditions, and one of these contained his own name. 
She was to see him only once each month, between noon 
and sunset. 

Such was Count Guiccioli’s sop from Eome. 

As Gordon read, he felt a dull anger at the assump- 
tion that had coupled his name with hers in that docu- 
ment. Yet underneath he was conscious of a painful 


THE CASTAWAY 


60S 

relief; fate had partially solved the problem for them. 
He raised his eyes as a sob came from Teresa^s lips. 

She had not thought of possible conditions. A 
month — ^how swiftly the last had flown! — seemed sud- 
denly an infinity. She had longed for that message, 
prayed for it ; now she hated it. 

Another figure entered at that instant from the 
street. It was Tita, just from her father^s villa. Count 
Gamba had been less well of late, and now the messen- 
ger’s face held an anxiety that struck through her own 
grief. 

The news was soon told. Her father had had a syn- 
cope at daybreak and the doctor was then with him. 

Tita did not tell her the whole : she did not learn till 
she reached the villa that Count Gamba, suspected of 
fomenting the revolution, had received notice from the 
government to quit Eomagna within ten days. 


CHAPTER XLIII 


ONE GOLDEN HOUR 

^‘To-day — to-day!^’ Teresa’s heart said, ‘‘To-day he 
will come !” 

Just a month ago she had left Casa Guiccioli forever; 
now she sat in the fountained garden of the Gamba 
villa, a few miles from Ravenna, rose-pale, cypress-slen- 
der, her wanness accentuated hy the black gown she 
wore — the habit of mourning. The sentence of exile 
against Count Gamba had never been carried out ; a 
greater than Austria had intervened. Since that morn- 
ing when a servant had found him unconscious among 
the cold retorts of his laboratory, clasping the decree 
that had broken his heart, he had revived, but only to 
fail again. The end had come soon. A week ago 
Teresa had followed him to the narrow home over which 
no earthly power claimed jurisdiction. 

As she sat, drenched with the attar of the September 
afternoon, in her lap the “Romeo and Juliet” which Gor- 
don had given her on their last meeting, gladness crept 
goldenly through her grief. The book had lain on the 
arbor bench during the night, and this morning she had 
( 309 ) 


310 


,THE CASTAWAY 


found a letter written on its blank title page. For the 
hundredth time she perused it now : 

*‘I have found this book in your garden and re-read it 
in the moonlight. You were absent, or I could not have 
done so. Others would understand these words if I wrote 
them in Italian, but you will interpret them in English. 
You will recognize, too, the handwriting of one who loves 
you and will divine that over any book of yours he can 
think only of that fact. In that word, beautiful in all 
languages, but most so in yours-^mor mio — ^is comprised 
my existence here and hereafter. My destiny has rested 
with you, and you are a woman, nineteen years of age, and 
but two out of a convent. Fate has separated us, but to 
weigh this is now too late. I love you and cannot cea^ 
to love you. Will you think of me if the Alps and the 
ocean divide us? Ah, — ^but they never can unless you 
wish it!” 

This letter had been wrung from him by the thought 
of the loss and loneliness in which he could not comfort 
her ; beneath its few words lay the strain and longing of 
the old struggle. He had told himself at first that her 
separation could make no difference with his going. But 
now she was alone, bereft, saddened. If he went, could 
she love him any the less ? So he had wrestled as Jacob 
wrestled with the angel. 

As Teresa read, a moving shadow fell on the page. 
She looked up to see him coming between the clipped 
yew hedges. In another moment he had caught her 
hands in his. 

^^How you have suffered !” he said, his gaze searching 
her face, to which a glad fiush had leaped. 

She framed his head in her arms, just touching his 
strong brown curling hair with its slender threads of 


THE CASTAWAY 


311 


gray. knew yon cared. I knew yon had been near 
me often. I fonnd the flowers — and this note.’^ 

have been here in the garden every night. I was 
here that one night, too — ^when yon were first alone.^’ 

Tears gathered in her eyes. 

^Tt was the decree of exile that killed him,” she said 
slowly. ^^He loved Italy and hoped for what can never 
be. They say the nprising in the north has failed and 
all its chiefs are betrayed. That is the bitterness of it: 
it was for nothing after all that he died! Italy will 
not be free. Yon believe it cannot, I know.” 

^^Sometime,” he answered gently. ^‘^Bnt not soon. 
Italy’s peasants are not fighting men like the Greeks; 
they lack the inspiration of history. Bnt no man cham- 
pions a great canse in vain. And now,” he asked, chang- 
ing the snbject, ^Vhat shall yon do ?” 

have sent the news to my brother Pietro. Cavadja 
has lost his principality and Prince Mavrocordato is 
in flight from Wallachia. Pietro is with him. My let- 
ters mnst find and bring him soon. Till then I have 
Elise — she was my nnrse. I shall be glad when Pietro 
comes. How long it is since I have seen him! He 
wonld not know me now. He has only my convent 
miniatnre to remind him !” 

Gordon’s thought fled back to a day when he had 
swnm for the brother’s life and fonnd that pictnred 
ivory. Eate had played an intricate game. He wonld 
more than once have told her of that incident bnt for 
another honnding memory — ^the recollection of the mad 
fit of rage in which he had gronnd the miniatnre nnder 
his heel. He conld not tell her that ! 


312 


THE CASTAWAY 


‘T know why yon have stayed on at the casa/’ she said; 
‘Hhat it is for my sake, to spare me idle tongues. Yet 
I have been so afraid for you. You would never go 
armed 

am in small danger,” he smiled, ^‘Fletcher, and 
Tita whom you left me for body-guard, watch zealously. 
One or the other is always under foot. One would think 
1 were Ali Pasha himself.” 

He spoke half humorously, trying to coax the smile 
back to her lips. He did not tell her with what danger 
and annoyances his days had been filled: that police 
spies, in whose assiduity he recognized the work of her 
husband and Trevanion, shadowed his footsteps; that 
to excite attempts at his assassination the belief had 
even been disseminated, that he was in league with the 
Austrians. Nor did he tell her that this very morning 
Fletcher had found posted in the open market-place a 
proclamation too evidently inspired by secret service 
agents, denouncing him as an enemy to the morals, 
the literature and the politics of Italy. He had long 
ago cautioned Tita against carrying her news of these 
things. 

As they strolled among the dahlias, straight and tall 
as the oleanders in the river beds of Greece, she told 
him of her father^s last hours, and her life in the villa, 
brightened only by Tita’s daily visits from the casa. 

‘‘What have you been writing?’^ she questioned. 
“Has it been ‘Don Juan ?’ ” 

He shook his head. The hope she had expressed — 
that he would some day finish it more worthily — had 
clung to him like ivy. With an instinct having its root 
deeper than his innate hatred of hypocrisy, he had for- 
forwarded the earlier cantos when learning she had pre- 


THE CASTAWAY 


313 ^ 


vented to John Murray in London for publication. 
This instinct was not kin to the bravado with which he 
had sent ^^Cain” from Venice ; it was a crude but grow- 
ing prescience that he must one day stand before the 
world by all he had written and that the destruction 
even of its darker pages would mutilate his life’s vol- 
ume. But he had not yet continued the poem. Think- 
ing of this he sighed before he asked her : 

^^Have you read all the books I sent ?” 

^^Many of them. But I liked this” — she touched the 
^^Eomeo and Juliet” — ^^most of all.” 

^Tt is scarce a tale for sad hours,” he said, laying his 
hand over hers on the slim leather. 

Her fingers crept into his, as she went on earnestly j 
^^The stone you brought from Verona makes it seem so 
true ! Do you suppose it really happened so ? What do 
you think was the potion the monk gave her ?” 

^^A drachm of mandragora, perhaps. That is said to 
produce the cataleptic trance. I wish Juliet’s monk 
mixed his drafts in Eavenna now,” he added with a 
touch of bitterness ; shall often long for such a nepen- 
the before the next moon, Teresa.” 

He felt her fingers quiver. The thought of the coming 
long month shook her heart. ^TTou will go from Ea- 
venna before that,” she whispered, ^%hall you not ?” 

^Trom the casa, perhaps. Not from near you. The 
day you leff Casa Guiccioli I had made up my mind to 
leave Italy. But now — ^now — ^the only thing I see cer- 
tainly is that I cannot go yet. Not till the skies are 
brighter for you.” 

^^Oan they ever be brighter — if you go ?” 

‘TTou must not tempt me beyond my strength,” he 


314 


THE CASTA WAX 


answered, a dumb pain on his lips. ^^Ah, forgive me ! 
I did not mean — 

^^Tempt you ! Have I done that 

^Tt is my own heart tempts me — ^not you t It is that 
I cannot trust 

‘‘I can trust it/’ she said under her breath. Her eyes 
were luminous and tender. ^Tt is all I have to trust 
now.” 

His strength was melting. He would have taken her 
into his arms, but the neigh of his tethered horse and a 
familiar answering whinny came across the yews. 

^Tt is Fletcher,” he said in surprise. He crossed the 
garden to meet him. 

^^What is it, Fletcher?” he demanded. ^^Why have 
you left the rooms ?” 

‘^My lord!” stammered the valet, ^^did you not send 
for me?” 

Fletcher looked crestfallen. 

^^Who gave you such a message ?” 

^^Count Guiccioli’s secretary, your lordship.” 

A disquieting apprehension touched Gordon’s mind. 
. Why had Paolo sent the servant on this sleeveless errand 
j — ^unless he were wished out of the way? He remem- 
^bered a packet which Count Gamba, weeks before, had 
entrusted to him for safe-keeping. At the time Gordon 
had suspected its contents had to do with the Carbonari s 
plans. This packet was in his apartments. Found, 
might it inculpate the dead man’s friends in that lost 
cause ? 

He rejoined Teresa with a hasty excuse for his return 
to the casa. 


THE CASTAWAY 


315 


^TTou will come back?’^ She questioned with sudden 
vague foreboding. 

‘TTes, before sunset.” 

^Tromise me — promise me !” 

For one reassuring moment he put his arm about her, 
aching to fold her from all the world. The past for 
them both was a grim mirage, the future a blind dilem- 
ma — ^nay, there was no future save as it gloomed, a preg- 
nant shadow of this present so wrought of doubt and joy. 


€HAPTER XLIV 

BY ORDER OF THE POPE 

Nearing Casa Guiccioli, Gordon saw a crowd clns- 
terpjg a few paces from the entrance. Servants were 
watching from the balcony. 

A couple of soldiers cocked their guns and would have 
hindered him, but he put them aside. On the pavement 
lay a man in uniform, shot through the breast. Over 
him bent a beardless adjutant feeling for a pulse, and a 
priest muttering a horrified prayer. 

He asked a hurried question or two amid the con- 
fusion and dismay : The prostrate man was the military 
commandant of Ravenna. No one knew whence the 
shot had come a full twenty minutes before. Now his 
guard stood, with characteristic Italian helplessness, do- 
ing nothing, waiting orders from they knew not whom 
or where. 

Gordon spoke authoritatively to the subaltern, bade 
one of the soldiers go for the police, despatched another 
Avith the news to the cardinal and directed two of the 
crowd to lift the injured man and carry him to his own 
quarters in the casa. This done he sent Fletcher for the 
surgeon who had attended his own wound in that same 
( 316 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


317 


chamber, and stationed the remaining soldiers at the 
lower doors. When the room was cleared he gave his 
attention to the unconscious commandant. 

He stood a moment looking fixedly at the bed- It wa ' 
this man^s spies who had dogged him during the pas^ 
month, persecuted his servants and attempted to rai^e 
the Kavennese against his very presence in the city. The 
government he served would have rejoiced to see him, 
Gordon, lying stretched there in the other’s place ; would 
have given but lukewarm pursuit to the assassin. Yet 
the man before him lay helpless enough now. Preseutly 
the casa would be full of soldiers, dragoons, priests and 
all the human paraphernalia of autocratic authority. 
Who had fired the shot? And by what strange chance, 
almost at his own threshold ? 

He crossed the floor, unlocked a drawer and took out 
Count Gamba’s packet with satisfaction. His foot 
struck something on the floor. 

He picked it up. It was a small leather letter-case — 
evidently fallen from the pocket of the wounded com- 
mandant. He took a step toward the bed, intending to 
replace it, and saw Tita at the door. 

The latter wore no coat. He was sweaty and covered 
with dust. He beckoned Gordon into the next room. 

^^Excellence,” he asked huskily; ^Vill you not open 
that portafogli?'^ 

•my?” 

^Terhaps to know what he knew.” 

“Why should I wish to know?” 

“Because he was on his way here — ^to this casa. Ex- 
cellence.” 

Gordon saw that he was trembling, it seemed with 


318 


THE CASTAWAY 


both fatigue and repressed excitement. ^^Tell me what 
you know/^ he said. 

Tita spoke rapidly, his words tumbling one against 
^another : 

heard Paolo send your valet after you to-day, Ex- 
^cellence, when no one had come from the villa. It did 
not seem right. I watched from the garden. I could 
see someone in this room — it was locked when you 
went. I climbed a tree. The master and one other — 

^^Trevanion !” 

— I could not tell. They were carrying in boxes. 
When they left the casa, I got through the window and 
broke them open. They held bullets and cans of pow- 
der.^’ 

Gordon swept a swift glance around the room. He 
was beginning to understand. Ammunition, presumably 
for the use of the insurrectionists, here in his rooms — 
©videnc3e of complicity with the Carbonari, A military 
esarcli at the proper moment — expulsion from Italy! 
He distinguished the outlines clearly, 
yes,^^ he said; ^^go on.’^ 

know the police have watched you. I guessed what 
it meant. I wanted to get the boxes away, but I could 
not — ^the servants would have seen me. I knew the sol- 
diers would come soon. I climbed to the casa roof.” 

The narrator had paused. The paper shook in Gor- 
don’s hand. “Ho more, Tita I” 

“It was the only way. Excellence!” said Tita, his 
features working. “I swore on the Virgin to guard you, 
whatever came. The servants ran to the balconies 
when — it happened. The way was clear. I carried the 


THE CASTAWAY 


319 


boxes down to the garden. There is a covered well. 
They are there — where no one would look.^^ 

Gordon was staring at the letter-case, his mind strug- 
"gling between revolt at the act itself and a sense of its 
motive. So it was for him the shot had been fired ! 
What a ghastly levity that the wounded man should 
now be lying here ! He shuddered. Tita’s voice spoke 
again : 

^‘^Now, Excellence, will you read what may be in that 
portafogli f 

Gordon strode to the window and opened the case. 
It contained a single official letter. He unfolded and 
scanned it swiftly : 

“Rome, Direction- General of Police. 

(Most private.) 

“Your Excellency: 

^‘The Governor of Rome, in his capacity of Director- 
General, forwards the following: 

“ ‘With the approval of Count Guiccioli, her husband, 
from whom by papal decree she has been separated, it is 
deemed advisable since the death of her father to modify 
that decree, and to grant to the Contessa Guiccioli hence- 
forth a retreat in the protection of Holy Church. You are 
directed herewith to arrange for her immediate convey- 
ance to the Convent of Saint Ursula in His Holiness’ es- 
tates below Rome. 

“ ‘CoNSALVi, Cardinal, 

“ ‘Secretary of State to Pius VII.* 

“Under direction of the Cardinal of Ravenna, you will 
act upon this without delay. 

“To the Sub-direction of Police at Ravenna.” 

Gordon raised his eyes with a start. Teresa — to be 
shut from the face of the sun, from flowers, from glad- 


320 


THE CASTAWAY 


ness, for years, at least during the lifetime of her hus- 
band, perhaps forever? From him? Was this the fate 
he, cursed as he was, must bring upon her? 

He felt his breath stop. What could he do? Takft 
her away? How and where? ^^Her immediate con- 
veyance’^ — ^%ct without delay.” Those were no am- 
biguous words; they meant more than soon. If it 
shouid be to-day! If authority was on its way to her, 
even now, while he dallied here ! 

Tita saw the deathly pallor that overspread his face 
like a white wave. “What is it. Excellence ?” he cried. 

Gordon made no reply. He dashed the portafogli 
on the floor and rushed from the room. 

His horse stood at the casa entrance. He pushed 
past the stolid sentinel, threw himself into the saddle, 
and lashed the animal to an anguish of speed toward the 
villa. 


CHAPTEE XLV 


THE SUMMONS 

Seated amid the dahlias, Teresa, from speculation as 
to what had recalled Gordon to the casa, drifted into a 
long day-dream from which a sudden sound awoke her. 

Several troopers passed along the roadway; following 
were two closed carriages. While she listened the wheels 
seemed to stop. 

^Tt is the Mother Superior come from Bagnacavallo,^^ 
she thought. As she sprang up, she heard old Elise call- 
ing. Slipping the ^^Eomeo and JulieP^ into her pocket, 
she went hastily into the house. 

Eive minutes later she stood dumb and white before 
three persons in the villa parlor. Two were nuns wear- 
ing the dress of the order of St. Ursula. The other she 
had recognized — ^he had visited her father in his illness 
: --as chaplain to the Cardinal of Eavenna. A letter eear-- 
mg the papal arms, dropped from her hand, lay at her^ 
feet. What it contained but one other in Eavenna be- 
sides the cardinal knew : that was the military command- 
ant who had furnished the ecclesiastic his escort of troop- 
ers disposed outside the villa, and who at that moment 
was walking on another errand, straight toward a mus- 
ket, filed half down, waiting on a casa roof. 


822 


THE CASTAWAY 


mnst start without delay, Contessa/^ The cler- 
ical’s voice fell half-compassionately. ^The villa and its 
servants remain at present under the vice-legate’s 
care. By direction, nothing may be taken with you save 
suitable apparel for the journey. We go only as far as 
Forli to-night.” 

Teresa scarcely heard. Haste — when such a little time 
before she had been so happy! Haste — ^to bid farewell 
now to the world that held him f In her father’s death 
she had met the surpassing but natural misfortune of 
bereavement. This new blow brought a terror without 
presage or precedent, that seemed to grip her every sense. 
The convent of Saint Ursula ! hTot a home such as she 
had known at Bagnacavallo, a free abode of benignant 
phantom-footed monitors, but a forced retreat, a prison, 
secret and impregnable. 

What could she do ? What could she do ? The ques- 
S-iOn pealed in her brain as she answered dully, conscious 
all the time of a stinging sense of detail: the chaplain 
facing her ; the silent religieuses beside him ; the 
wrinkled face of Elise peering curiously from the hall; 
out of doors goldening sunlight, men’s voices conversing 
and the stamping of horses’ hoofs. Not even to see him 
— to tell him ! 

As she climbed the stair mechanically, a kind of dazed 
sickness in her limbs, she pictured Gordon’s returning 
at the hour’s end to find her gone forever. She sat down, 
her hands clenched, the nails striking purple crescents 
in the palms, striving desperately to think. If she 
could escape I 

She ran to the window — a trooper stood smoking a 


THE CASTAWAY, 


323 


short pipe at the rear of the villa. She went to the stair- 
case and called : ^^Elise 

A nun ascended the stair. ^^The servants are receiv- 
ing His Eminence’s instructions,” she explained. ^Tray 
let me help you.” 

Teresa began to tremble. She thanked her with an 
effort and automatically set about selecting a few arti- 
cles of clothing. The apathy of hopelessness was upon 
her. 

The chaplain stood at the foot of the stair when they 
descended. Seeing him waiting, the sharper pain re- 
swept her. Only to bridge that time — ^to see Gordon 
again, if but for an instant, before she went. She 
stopped, searching his face. 

should like a little while alone before I go. There 
is time for that, is there not ?” 

His grave face lighted, the authoritative merged in- 
stantly in the fatherly solicitude of the shepherd of 
souls. He thought she longed for the supreme consola- 
tion of prayer. 

^^A half-hour if you wish it, my daughter. The chapel 
— shall it not be ?” He led the way. Elise sat weeping 
in a chair; as they passed she snatched Teresa’s hand 
and kissed it silently. 

From the side steps a tunnelled yew walk curved to 
a door in one of the villa’s narrow wings. This wing, 
which had no connection with the rest of the house, had 
been added by Count Gamba as a chapel for Teresa’s 
mother. It was scrupulously kept, and during all the 
years since her death bowls of fresh flowers had scented 
it daily and two candles had been kept burning before 
the crucifix over its cushioned altar. The attic above 


324 


THE CASTAWAY 


Count Gamba had used as a laboratory for his unending 
chemical experiments. It was there the message had 
found him which had brought so cruel a result. 

The churchman paused at the chapel door, and Teresa 
entered alone. He closed it behind her. 


CHAPTEK XLVI 


THE POTION- 

The declining sun shone dimly through the painted 
windows. The chapel was in half-dark. Teresa went 
slowly to where the two candles winked yellowly. She 
had often knelt there, but she brought now no thought 
of prayer. Might Gordon come in time? Would his 
errand at the casa delay him? Could fate will that she 
should miss Him by such a narrow margin? She 
crouched suddenly down on the altar cushions, dry, tear- 
less sobs tearing at her throat. 

She felt the book in her pocket and drew it out. 

Only that morning she had found the letter written in 
it — only an hour ago their hands had touched together 
on its cover. How truly now Juliet’s plight seemed like 
her own! But she, alas! had no friendly monk nor 
magic elixir. There were no such potions nowadays. 
What was it Gordon had said ? Mandragora — a drachm 
of mandragora ? If she only had some now ! 

She caught her breath. 

In another minute she was stumbling up the narrow 
curling stair to the loft above. 

Ten minutes later she stood in the center of the labora- 
tory, lined with its shelves of crooked-necked retorts and 
( 325 ) 


326 


THE CASTAWAY 


bottles, her search ended, the blood shrinking from her 
heart, her hand clutching a small phial. 

Gasping, she seized a slender graduated glass and hur- 
ried down. She ran to the chapel door and fastened it, 
hearing while she slid the bolt, the steps of the cleric 
pacing up and down without. 

As she stood again at the altar, the phial in her hand, 
a bleak fear crossed her soul. What if it had never been 
anything but a story? Perhaps Juliet had never 
awakened really, but had died when she drank the po- 
tion ! Suppose it were a poison, from which there was 
no awaking! 

She shivered as if with cold. Better even that than 
life — ^without him! 

Perhaps, too, Gordon had jested or had. been mistaken. 
It might have been some other drug — some other quan- 
tity. 

Another dread leaped upon her out of the shadow. 
Suppose it were the right drug — that its effect would be 
as he had said. What, then? In her agony she had 
thought only of escape from the hour’s dilemma. There 
would be an afterward. And who would know she only 
slept? She dared not trust to Elise — her fright would 
betray her. She dared not leave a writing lest other eyes 
than Gordon’s should see and understand. Suppose she 
did it, and it succeeded, and he came afterward. He 
would deem her dead in truth, — ^that was what Eomeo 
had thought ! — a victim of her own despair. They would 
bear her to the Gamba vault cold and coffined, to wake 
beside her father, without Juliet’s hope of rescue. Her 
brain rocked with hysterical terror. If Gordon only 
knew, she would dare all — dare that worst. But how 


THE CASTAWAY 


327 


could she let him know ? Even if he were here now she 
would have neither time nor opportunity. Her half- 
hour of grace was almost up. 

Yet — if he saw her lying there, apparently lifeless, 
and beside her that book and phial — ^would he remember 
what he had said? Would he guess? Oh God, would 
he? 

A warning knock sounded at the chapel door. 

^^Blessed Virgin, help me !” whispered Teresa, poured 
the drachm and drank it. 

Then with a sob she stretched herself on the altar 
cushions and laid the ^^Eomeo and Juliet” open on her 
breast. 

When finally — ^his wonder and indignation having 
given place to apprehension — ^the chaplain employed a 
dragoon’s stout shoulder to force the chapel door, he dis- 
tinguished at first only emptiness. 

He approached the altar to start back with an ex- 
clamation of dismay at what he saw stretched in the 
candle-light. 

He laid a faltering hand on Teresa’s; it was already 
chilled. He raised her eyelid — the pupil was expanded 
to the iris’ edge. He felt her pulse, her heart. Both 
were still. A cry of horror broke from his lips, as he 
saw a phial lying uncorked beside her. He picked it up, 
noting the far-faint halitus of the deadly elixir. 

His cry brought Elise, with the nuns behind her. The 
old woman pushed past the peering trooper and rushed 
to throw herself beside the altar with a wail of lamenta- 
tion. 

The chaplain lifted her and drew her away. 


328 


THE CASTAWAY 


back to the house/^ he bade her sternly; ^^et no 
servant enter here till word comes from Casa Guiccioli/^ 
He waved the black-gowned figures back to the thresh- 
old. ^^She is self -slain he said. 

In the confusion none of them had seen a man enter 
the garden from the side, who, hearing the first alarm, 
had swiftly approached the chapel. Ho one had seen 
him enter the open door behind them. 

The churchman, with that solemn pronouncement 
on his lips, stopped short at Gordon’s white, awe-frosted 
face. There was not true sight but rather a woeful con- 
gealed vision in those eyes turned upon the altar; they 
seemed those of a soul in whom the abrupt certainty of 
perdition has sheathed itself unawares. 

The chaplain drew back. He recognized the man who 
had come so suddenly 4:o meet that scene. A dark shadow 
crossed his face. Then muttering a prayer, he followed 
the nuns to the carriages to bear back the melancholy 
news to Kavenna. 


CHAPTER XLYII 


THE COMPLICITY OF THE GODS 

‘ ‘ Self-slain ! ’ ’ The words of the priest, as Gordon 
stood there, seemed to reecho about him with infinite 
variations of agony. He had ridden vacant of purpose, 
destitute of plan — ^thrilling only to reach her. Desper- 
ate, lawless thoughts had rung through his mind as he 
galloped. Entering the garden he had seen the carriages 
and heard the chaplain^s cry at the same moment. Then, 
with the awful instantaneousness of an electric bolt, the 
blow had fallen. It was the last finality — the closure 
of the ultimate gateway of hope — ^the utter assurance of 
the unescapable doom in which all ends save the worm 
that dies not and the fire that is not quenched. 

He drew closer to the altar, his step dragging as he 
walked — ^his infirmity grown all at once painfully ap- 
parent — and gazed at the mute face on the cushions. 
The priest and his escort were forgotten. He knew 
nothing save that dreadful assertion that had sent the 
nuns hastily from the door, telling their beads, and had 
forbidden even the servant to enter. 

Self-slain? No, but slain by George Gordon — ^the ac- 
cursed bearer of all maranatha^ damned to the last jot 
and tittle. He had done her to death as surely as if his 
own hand had held the phial lying there to her lips. It 
( 329 ) 


330 


THE CASTAWAY 


was because he had stayed in Eavenna that she lay here- 
dead before the crucifix — ^the symbol that she had sought 
at San Lazzarro, that Padre Somalian had prayed to ! 

Staring across hueless wastes of mental torture to a 
blank horizon, something the friar had said came to 
him: ^^Every man bears a cross of despair to his Cal- 
vary.’^ What a vacuous futility! Infinity, systems,, 
worlds, man, brain. Was this the best the aeon-long evo- 
1 lution could offer ? This bloodless image nailed upon a 
tree? What had it availed her? 

He suddenly fell on his knees beside her. Dead? 
Teresa dead ? Why, a few months before, at the monas- 
tery, he had regarded death for himself with calmness,, 
almost with satisfaction. But not for her — never for 
her. Was she dead, and he to live on — ^never to see her, 
to hear her speak, not even to know that she was some- 
where in the world ? 

He saw for the first time the little book lying open on 
her breast in the candle-light. He took it mechanically 
and turned its leaves. As mechanically his eye read, not 
sensible of what it translated, but as surcharged agon}’’ 
unconsciously seeks relief in the doing of simple, habit- 
ual things : 

“When presently through all thy veins shall run 
A cold and drowsy humor; for no pulse 
Shall keep his native progress, hut surcease: 

No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest; 

The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade 
To paly ashes; thy eyes’ windows fall. 

Like death, when he shuts up the day of life! 

And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death 
Thou Shalt continue two and forty hours, 

And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.” 


THE CASTAWAY 


331 


The last words of the monk Gordon repeated aloud: 
‘^And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.” 

A sudden tingling sensation leaped through every 
nerve. He snatched at the phial and bent to its label — 
^^Mandragora.” 

^^With an inarticulate cry he sprang up, leaped to 
the nearest window and smashed it frantically with 
his fist. The splintering glass cut his hand, but he did 
not feel it. He caught a fragment as it fell, and in a 
second was holding it close over Teresa’s parted lips. 

He waited a time that seemed a dragging eternity, 
then lifted it to the candle-light and looked with fearful 
earnestness. The faintest tarnish, light as gossamer 
film, clouded it. 

The crystal clashed upon the floor. He seized and 
emptied one of the rose bowls and rushed out through 
the darkening flower-paths to the fountain in the gar- 
den. Goldfish flirted and glistened in panic as he filled 
the bowl with the icy water. He hurried back, dipped 
Teresa’s stirless hands into its coldness and dashed it 
over her face, drenching her white neck and the dull 
gold hair meshed on the velvet. 

Three separate times he did this. Then, breathless, 
he seized her arms and began to move them as one re- 
suscitates a half-drowned person, trying to rouse the 
lungs to action to throw off the lethal torpor of the bel- 
ladonna-like opiate. 

He worked for many minutes, the moisture running 
from his forehead, his breath coming in gasps. Labor- 
ing, he thought of the dire risk she had run, trusting all 
to his promise to return and to his divination. He re- 


332 


THE CASTAWAY 


membered he had said a drachm. To make assurance 
doubly sure, might she have taken more ? 

He kept watching her features — the rigor seemed to be 
loosening, the marble rigidity softening its outlines. But 
heart and pulse were still. In despair he laid his warm 
lips close upon her cold ones and filled her lungs with 
a great expiration, again and again. 

He lifted himself, trembling now with hope. The 
lungs, responding to that forced effort, had begun to re- 
new their function. Her bosom rose and fell — slowly, 
but still it was life. He dried her face and chafed her 
hands between his own. She commenced to breathe 
more naturally and rhythmically; at length she sighed 
and stirred on the cushions. 

A rush of tears blinded Gordon’s eyes — ^the first he 
had shed since the night in London when he had bent 
above the little empty snow-silent bed that had held 
Ada. He dashed them away, seeing that Teresa’s eyes 
were open. 

Her hand, wavering, touched his wet cheek. 

‘^My love !” he said. ^^My love !” 

The first fact that came to her out of the void was 
that of his tears. A troubled look crossed her brow. 

^^All is well. Do you remember?” 

Her eyes, roaming at first bewildered, saw the dark 
chapel, the flaring, garish candles, caught the expres- 
sion of his face, still drawn and haggard, and white with 
strain. All came back upon her in a surge. She half 
raised herself, his arm supporting her. They two there 
alone — the priest gone — ^the dusk fallen to night. She 
had succeeded ! Gordon had come — ^his arms held her ! 

In the joyful revulsion, she turned her face to him 


THE CASTAWAY 


333 


and threw her arms about his neck, feeling herself 
canght np in his embrace, every fiber shuddering with 
the terror passed, weeping with weak delight, clinging 
to him as to her only refuge, still dizzy and faint, but 
with safe assurance and peace. 

Looking down at her Avhere she rested, her face buried 
on his breast, her whole form shaken with feeling, mur- 
muring broken words, slowly calling back her strength, 
Gordon felt doubt and indecision drop from his mind. 
The convent was not for her — ^not by all she had suf- 
fered that day ! Only one thing else remained : to take 
her away forever, beyond the papal frontier — ^with him! 
Fate and the world had given her to him now by the re- 
sistless logic of circumstance. 

He reckoned swiftly : 

The news by this time had reached the casa in Ea- 
venna. Another half-hour at most and choice would be 
taken from their hands. They must lose no time. Yet 
whither? Where could he go, that hatred would not 
pursue? To what Ultima Thule could he fiy, that the 
poison barb would not follow to wound her happiness? 
Where to live? Never in England! In the East, — in 
Greece, perhaps, the land of his youthful dreams? It 
was a barbarian pashawlih, under the foot of Ottoman 
greed; neither a fit nor secure habitation. In Italy, 
where her soul must always be? Tuscany — Pisa, where 
Shelley lived — ^was not far distant. They might reach 
its borders in safety. There they would be beyond the 
rule of Romagna, out of the states of the Church. 

^‘DearesV^ asked Gordon, ^^are you strong enough to 
ride?^^ 

She stirred instantly in his arms and stood up, though 


334 


THE CASTAWAY, 


unsteadily. yes, some one will come. We must go 

quickly.'’^ 

will saddle and fetch a horse for you to the chapel 
door.^^ 

She was feeling the sharp edge of fear again. 
shall be quite strong presently/^ she assured him. ^^Let 
us wait no longer.^^ 

He went noiselessly to the stables. He had dreaded 
meeting some one, but old Elise, beside herself with 
grief, had run to watch for those who should come from 
Eavenna, and the rest of the servants, dazed by the ca-* 
lamity, were huddled in the kitchen. Leading the horse, 
Gordon returned speedily. 

He put his arms about Teresa in the chapel doorway 
for an instant and held her close. He was feeling a call 
he had never felt before, the call that nature and 
civilization have planted in man deep as the desire for 
offspring, the song of the silver-singing goddess, whose 
marble image, on the night he had made that fatal 
trothing with Annabel, had been blackened by his 
thrown ink-well — Yesta, the personification of the 
hearthstone, of home. 

Teresa suddenly meant that to him. Home! Hot 
such a one as he had known at Hewstead Abbey, with 
Hobhouse and Sheridan and Moore. Hot a gray moated 
pile wound with the tragic fates of his own blood — a 
house of mirth, but not of happiness ! Hot like the one 
in Piccadilly Terrace, where he had lived with Annabel 
that one year of fever and heart-sickness and fading 
ideals! Ho, but a home that should be no part of his 
past ; a nook enisled, where spying eyes might not enter. 


THE CASTAWAY 


335 


where he should redeem those barren pledges he had once 
made to life, in the coin of real love. 

^^Teresa,^^ he said, ^Trom the journey we begin this 
hour there can be no return. It is out of the world 
you have lived in and known ! If there were any other 
way for you — save that one — 

“My life !” she whispered. 

The soft- voiced passion of her tenderness thrilled him. 
'Y'ou go to exile,^^ he went on, “to an alien place — 

“There is no exile, except from you, nor alien place 
where you are ! The world that disowns you may cast 
me out — ah, I shall be glad 

He laughed a low laugh of utter content. Lightly as 
if she had been a child, he lifted her into the saddle. 
Supporting her at first, he led the horse over the turf 
and into the driveway where his own waited. 

Then mounting, his hand holding her bridle, they 
rode into the velvety dark. 

Old Elise, tearfully watching the Eavenna road, heard 
horses coming from the villa grounds. From the selvedge 
of the hedge, she saw the faces of Teresa and Gordon, 
pallid in the starlight. 

The old woman’s breath failed her. All the servants’ 
tales of the Englishman, whom she had seen at the casa, 
recurred to her superstitious imagination. He was a 
fiend, carrying off the dead body of her mistress ! 

She crouched against the ground, palsied with fright, 
till the muffled hoof-beats died away. Then she rose 
and ran, stumbling with fear, to the house. 

As Gordon and Teresa rode through the azure gloom 
of the Italian night, a girlish moon was tilting over 
the distant purple of the mountains, beyond whose 


336 


THE CASTAWAY 


many-folded fastnesses lay Tuscany and Pisa. Her 
weakness had passed and she kept her saddle more cer- 
tainly. The darkness was friendly ; before the sun rose 
they would be beyond pursuit. 

As the villa slipped behind them and the odorous for- 
est shut them round, Gordon rode closer and clasped her 
in his arms with a rush of joy, straining her tight to 
him, feeling the fervid beating of her heart, his own 
exulting with the fierce, primordial flame of possession. 

^^Mine!^^ he cried. ^^My very own at last — ^now and 
always.” 


CHAPTER XLYIII 

THE ALL OF LOVE 

Spring, the flush wooer, was come again. The prints 
of gentian showed where his blue-sandalled feet had 
trod, and the wild plum and cherry blooms announced 
the earth his bride. In the tranquil streets of Pisa, 
where the chains of red-liveried convicts toiled not, 
young grass sprouted. Beneath a sky serenely, beauti- 
fully blue, the yellow Arno bore its lazy sails under 
still bridges and between bright houses, green-shut- 
tered against the sun. Round about lay new corn-fields 
busy with scarlet-bodiced peasants, forests and hills 
sagy-green with olive, and further off the clear Carrara 
peaks and the solemn hoary Apennines. At night a 
breeze fragrant as wood-smoke, cooling the myrtle 
hedges fiecked with the first pale-green meteors of the 
fireflies. 

The few English residents had long grown used to the 
singular figure of Shelley, beardless and hatless, habited 
like a boy in stinted jacket and trousers — ^that mild 
philosopher at war with the theories of society ; a fresher 
divertissement had stirred them when the old Lan- 
franchi Palace, built by Michael Angelo, on the Lung^ 
Arno, was thrown open in the autumn for a new occu- 
( 337 ) 


538 


THE CASTAWAY 


pant — a man whose striking face and halting step made 
him marked. The news flew among the gossips in a day. 

George Gordon was not alone, it was whispered over 
indignant tea-cups ; with him was a Eavennese contessa 
who had eloped by his aid out of Eomagna. Eeport 
averred that he had duelled with her husband, and after 
spiriting her beyond the frontier, had returned to Ea- 
venna to shoot down a military commandant who had 
attempted to interfere. Luckily for him, the story ran, 
the official had recovered, and the police, relieved to be 
quit of him, had allowed the execrated peer to depart 
unmolested with his chattels. For a time the Lan- 
franchi neighborhood was avoided, but at length, curi- 
osity overcame rigid decorum; femininity forgot its 
prudence and watched with open eagerness. 

Its reward, however, was meager. Except for Shelley 
and his young wife, Gordon chose seclusion even from 
the Italian circles, where title was an open sesame and 
uninsular laxity not unforgiven. This fact became un- 
mistakable when a billet from no less a personage than 
the grand duchess, a princess of the House of Saxony, 
brought from the Lanfranchi Palace a clear declination. 
The gossips held up their hands and subsided. 

For the primal object of this curiosity the winter, 
with its thaws and siroccos, had passed swiftly. In the 
present, so full of sweet surprise and unfolding, even 
Teresa’s long anxiety because of her brother’s non-ap- 
pearance and the boding with which Gordon watched 
for a sign from Trevanion, or from Count Guiccioli — 
who he knew would read rightly the enigma of her re- 
puted death and after disappearance — ^had softened 
Anally to an undisturbed content. 


THE CASTAWAY 


339 


The full measure of love was theirs. The outer world, 
with its m3rriad intonations, had dulled away, and Pisa 
and the old Lanfranchi pile constituted an inner roseate 
haven belonging wholly and only to themselves. A clois- 
tered city, its old grandeur departed and seemingly but 
half inhabited; the river drifting by, the house of the 
Shelleys on the opposite bank ; boats and horses ; a gar- 
den sweet with orange-trees and gushes of violets along 
shady walks ; a few servants marshalled by Fletcher and 
Tita; a study and books — and Teresa. It was the home 
Gordon had dreamed of when his arms were around her 
at the villa chapel, but more satisfying, more complete. 

Sometimes, in this Elysian life of theirs, as he felt her 
head against his knee while he read her new verses of his, 
— for now he knew oftener the old melodic pen-mood 
that at Venice had seemed vanished forever and that 
had first returned in the hour he had etched those lines 
on the fungus, — ^he was conscious of a sudden tightening 
of the heart. Could it last? The poison of his fame 
had gone deep. He lived at peace only by sufferance of 
military authority, now busy avenging its late alarm by 
the black-sentence and proscription. At any moment 
it might recommence in Tuscany the persecution with 
which the police of Eomagna had visited him : the yelp- 
ing terriers of the Continental press, a upas-growth of 
proces-verbdl, recrimination, hateful surveillance. 

Entering his restful study one day from a gallop with 
Shelley, Gordon wondered whether this retreat, too — 
whether each retreat he might find — ^would in the end 
be denied him and he condemned, a modem son of 
Shem, to pitch his tent in the wilderness. 

For himself it did not matter; but for her? She was 


34Q 


THE CASTAWAY 


happy now — only with him, even if beyond the pale. 
But could she always remain so? Drop by drop, as 
erosion wears the quartz, would not the trickling venom 
waste her soul? Were the specters of that further past 
when his life had run, like a burning train, through 
wanderings, adventure and passion — ^the ghosts of his 
own weaknesses and wilful tempers — not laid? Could 
they stalk into this halcyon present to pluck them asun- 
der? 

The ghosts of his own weaknesses! Clarity of vision 
had come to Gordon in these months. He had grown to 
see his old acts, not gaunt and perverse, projections of 
insistent caprice, but luminous with new self -solution. 
He had learned himself: what he had never known, 
either in his London life of success and failure, or in its 
ignoble Venetian aftermath. 

Looking out toward the purpling Apennines, where 
the sun sank to his crimson covert, he felt a mute aching 
wish : an intense desire that the world — ^not his contem- 
poraries, but a later generation — should be able to look 
beneath the specious shadow of opprobrium that covered 
him and see the truth. 

It could do this only through himself ; through pages 
he should write. The journals he had kept in London, 
when he had lived centered in a tremulous web of sensi- 
tiveness and wa5rvvard idiosyncrasy, had recorded his 
many-sided, prismatic personality only in fragments, 
torn, jagged morsels of his brain. In these memoirs he 
should strive to paint justly the old situations for which 
he had been judged. And these pages would persist, a 
cloud of witnesses, when he was beyond earthly summons 
and verdict. 


THE CASTAWAY 


341 


When Teresa entered the room in a mist-white gown, 
his face was bent close to the paper, the candles yet un- 
lighted. Coming close to him, she seated herself at his 
feet. He bent and kissed her in silence; the trooping 
visions the writing had recalled made his kiss linger- 
ingly tender. 

She pointed out of the window, through the million- 
tinted twilight. 

^^Do you remember, dear,’^ she asked, her voice thrill- 
ing him strangely, ^Vhen we rode to those mountains, 
you and I, from Eavenna ?” 

^TTes,^^ he replied, smiling. 

She had turned toward him, kneeling, her hands ca- 
ressing his clustering brown-gray curls. 

^TTou have never regretted that ride?^’ 

‘^Eegretted it ? Ah, Teresa 

Her face was looking up into his, a wistful question- 
ing in it — almost like pain, he thought wonderingly. 

^^You know all you said that night,” she went on hur- 
riedly; ^Vhat I was to you? Is it as true now?” 

^Tt is more true,” he answered. ^^All I have dreamed, 
all I have written here in Pisa — ^and some of it will live, 
Teresa — ^has had its source in you. All that I shall ever 
write will spring from your love! That began to be 
true the day you first kissed me.” 

^^That was when you found me on the convent hill, 
when we read from the Bible — ^the day I first knew of 
Allegra.” 

His face was averted, but she could see his shoulders 
lift and fall in a deep silent suspiration. 

^TTour forgiveness then was divine!” he said. Hot 


343 


THE CASTAWAY 


such had been the forgiveness of the world ! He clasped 
her in his arms. ^^You are all things to me 

^^Oh/^ she cried with a broken breath, ^^can I be all to 
yon?^" 

^^Wife and home and happiness — all V’ 

— And child ?” She was sobbing now. 

He started, feeling her arms straining him, seeing her 
blinded with tears. There suddenly seemed a woe- 
ful significance in what she had said — in her question. 
He felt the surging of some unexpected wave of dread 
which broke over his heart and washed it up in his 
throat. 

“Dearest! Two days ago I heard there was fever in 
the Bagnacavallo valley. I sent a courier at once. He 
has just returned. Gordon — ^how can I tell you 

Eor an instant she was frightened at his stony still- 
ness. In the dusk a mortal grayness spread itself over 
his features. He pushed back his chair as if to rise, but 
could not for her arms. It was not Allegra^s illness — 
it was more, it was the worst I His arms dropped to his 
sides. A shudder ran through him. 

“I understand,” he said at length. “I understand. 
Say no more.” 

In the words was not now the arrogant and passion- 
ate hostility of the old George Gordon. There was the 
deadly quietness of grief, but also something more. In 
that moment of numbing intelligence it was borne in up- 
on him with searing force, that death, perhaps, had acted 
not unkindly, that it had chosen well. What perils 
might that young life have held, springing from those 
lawless elements compounded in her nature: reckless- 
ness, audacity, the roving berserker foot, contempt for 


THE CASTAWAY 


343 


the world’s opinion, demoniac passions of hatred and re- 
prisal? The subtle, unerring divination of death had 
taken her in youthfulness, a heavened soul, from the 
precincts of that past of his to which nothing pure 
should have a mortal claim. 

So he thought, as feeling Teresa’s arms about him, 
his lips repeated more slowly and with a touch of pain- 
ful resignation — the first he had felt in all his life : 

H understand!” 

That was all. He was looking out across the mistily- 
moving Arno, silent, his hand on her bowed head. She 
lifted it after a time, feeling the silence acutely. Her 
eyes, swimming with changeless love and pitying tender- 
ness, called his own. 

At the wordless appeal, a swift rush of unshed tears 
burned his eyelids. ^^Death has done his work,” he said 
in a low voice. ^^Time, perhaps, may do his. Let us 
mention her no more.” 

Just then both heard a noise on the stairway — the 
choked voice of Fletcher and a vengeful oath. 

Teresa sprang to her feet with a sharp exclamation. 

Gordon rose and threw open the door. 


CHAPTER XLIX 


^^YOU ARE AIMIITG AT MY HEART 

The two men who burst into the room had been in- 
timately yet appositively connected with Gordon’s past. 
One had tried to take his life with a Malay kriss; the 
life of the other Gordon had once saved. They were 
Trevanion and Count Pietro Gamba, Teresa’s brother. 

The former had come, many times stealthily to Pisa ; 
for the master of Casa Guiccioli, cheated of his dearest 
plan, had had recourse to the umbrage of Tuscan official- 
ism. On this day, as it happened, Trevanion had been 
closeted with the police commandant when that official 
had been called upon to vise the passports of two stran- 
gers: Prince Mavrocordato, a tall commanding Greek, 
and a slighter, blond-bearded Italian, at whose name the 
listener had started — with the leap of a plan to his 
brain. Trevanion had followed the young Count Gamba 
to his hotel, picked acquaintance and, pretending ig- 
norance of the other’s relationship, had soon told him 
sufficient for his purpose: that the young and lovely 
Contessa Guiccioli, lured from Ravenna and her huH- 
band, was living.at that moment in Pisa — the light-oi 
love of an English noble whose excesses in Venice h»<i 
given him the appellation of the milord mdligno. 

The story had turned the brother’s blood to fire. All he 
( 344 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


345 


demanded was to be shown the man. Trevanion led him 
to the palace, where only Fletcher had met their en- 
try, and now the opening of a door had brought this 
winged vengeance and its object face to face. 

The sight of her long-absent brother — Trevanion be- 
hind him — ^the pistol the former held levelled at Gor- 
don’s breast — froze Teresa with sudden comprehension. 
She stood stock-still, unable to utter a word. Trevanion 
sprang forward, his finger pointing. 

^There he is !” he spat savagely. ^^There’s your Eng- 
lishman !” 

Gordon had made no move. Unarmed, resistance 
would have been futile in presence of the poised weapon. 
So this was the way that lurking Nemesis of his past was 
to return to him! He was looking, not at Trevanion, 
but at his companion, fixedly; recalling, with an odd 
sensation of the unreal, a windy lake with that face set- 
tling helplessly in the ripples as he swam toward it, the 
water roaring in his ears. The outre thought fiashed 
across him how sane and just the homilists of England 
would call it that he should meet his end in such inglo- 
rious fashion at the hands of this particular man. 

‘TTou white-livered fool!” scoffed Trevanion. ^^Why 
don’t you shoot?” 

His companion had paused, eying Gordon in astound- 
ed inquiry. His outstretched arm wavered. 

The paralysis of Teresa’s fear broke at the instant. 
She ran to him, throwing her arms around him, snatch- 
ing at the hand that held the pistol. 

^Tietro! Pietro!” she screamed. ^^Ah, God of love! 
Hear me, first ! Hear me !” 

He thrust her to her knees, and again, as Trevanion 


346 


THE CASTAWAY 


sneered, his arm stiffened. But the negative of that 
Genevan picture was before his eyes, too — its tones re- 
versed. He saw himself rising from the beach clasping 
the hand of his rescuer — ^heard his own voice say : ^Y’ou 
have given me my life ; I shall never forget it 

His arm fell. 

‘^Signore,^^ said Gordon steadily, long ago released 
you from any fancied obligation.^^ 

‘Tietro !” Teresa^s voice was choked with agony. ^Tt 
is not him alone you would kill ! You are aiming at my 
heart, too ! Pietro 

Amazedly, as she staggered to her feet, she saw her 
brother hurl the pistol through the open window and 
cover his face with his hands. 

Trevanion stared, almost believing Gordon an adept 
in some superhuman diablerie, by which in the moment 
of revenge he had robbed this caPs-paw of courage. Then 
laughing shrilly and wildly, he turned and lurched past 
Fletcher — leaning against the wall, dazed from the blow 
that had sent him reeling from the landing — down the 
stair. 

In the street he picked up the fallen pistol. The 
touch of the cool steel ran up his arm. He turned 
back, a devilish purpose in his eye. Why not glut hi^ 
hate once and for all? He had tried before, and 
failed. Why not now, more boldly? Italian justice 
would make only a pretense of pursuit. Yet British law 
had a long reach. Its ships were in every quarter of the 
globe. And Gordon, above all else, was a peer. 

A sudden memory made his flesh creep. He remem- 
bered once having seen a murderer executed in Kome. 
It came back to him as he stood with the weapon in his 


THE CASTAWAY 


347 


hand: the masked priests; the half-naked executioner; 
the bandaged criminal; the black Christ and his banner; 
the slow procession, the scaffold, the soldiery, the bell 
ringing the misericordia; the quick rattle and fall of 
the ax. 

Shuddering, he flung the pistol into the river with an 
imprecation. 

Looking up he saw a gaitered flgure that moved 
briskly along the street, to stop at the Lanf ranch! door- 
way. Trevanion recognized the severely cut clerical 
costume, the clean-shaven face with its broad scar, the 
queerish, insect-like, inquisitive eyes. He glanced down 
the river with absurd apprehension, half expecting to see 
His Majesty^s ship Pylades anchored in its muddy shal- 
lows — the ship from which he had deserted at Bombay 
once upon a time, at the cost of that livid scar on Dr. 
Cassidy’s cheek. 

He had shrunk from Cassidy’s observation in the 
lights of a London street; but in Italy he had no fear. 
He looked the naval surgeon boldly in the face, as he 
passed on to the police barracks. 

In the room from which Trevanion had rushed, Te- 
resa put her hand on her brother’s arm. Back of Gor- 
don’s only words and his own involuntary and unex- 
pected action, she had divined some joyful circumstance 
of which she was ignorant. What it was she was too re- 
lieved to care. 

^^Come,” she said gently; ^Ve have much to say to 
each other.” 

She sent one swift glance at Gordon; then the door 
closed between them. 


CHAPTER L 


CASSIDY FINDS A LOST SCENT 

On Gordon, in the shock of the fatal news Teresa had 
brought, the menace of that fateful onslaught had fallen 
numbly. No issue at that moment would have mat- 
tered greatly to himself. But in her piteous cry : ^TTou 
are aiming at my heart,” he had awakened. That part- 
ing glance, shining with fluctuant love, relief and as- 
surance, told him what that tragedy might have meant to 
her. Absorbed in his grief he had scarcely cared, had 
scarcely reckoned, of her. 

As he stood alone the thought stung him like a 
sword. He remembered with what tenderness she had 
tried to blunt the edge of her mournful message. 

His reverie passed with the entrance of Fletcher, still 
uncertain on his feet, and with a look of vast relief at 
the placid appearance of the apartment. A messenger 
brought a request from the Rev. Dr. Nott, a name well- 
known to Gordon in London. The clergyman, just ar- 
rived in Pisa, asked the use of the ground floor of the 
Lanfranchi Palace — ^he understood it was unoccupied — 
in which to hold service on the following Sunday. 

Over the smart of his sorrow, the wraith of a satiric 
smile touched Gordon’s lips. He, the nnelect and unre- 
( 348 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


349 


generate, to furnish a tabernacle for Pisan orthodoxy? 
The last sermon he had read was one preached by a 
London divine and printed in an English magazine ; its 
text was his drama of ^"Cain/^ and it held him up to the 
world as a denaturalized being, who, having drained the 
cup of sensual sin to its bitterest dregs, was resolved, in 
that apocalypse of blasphemy, to show himself a cool, 
unconcerned fiend. 

And yet, after all, the request was natural enough. 
The palace that housed him was the most magnificent in 
Pisa, in proportions almost a castle. And, in fact, the 
lower floor was empty and unused. Was he to mar this 
saner existence, in which he felt waking those old in- 
spirations and ideals, with the crude spirit of combative- 
ness in which his bruised pride took refuge when popu- 
lar clamor thrust him from his kind? If he refused, 
would not the very refusal be made a further weapon 
against him ? 

Had Gordon seen the mottled clerical countenance 
that waited for answer in the street below he might have 
read a partial answer to this question. 

Cassidy’s ship having anchored at Leghorn, he had 
embraced the opportunity to distribute a few doctrinal 
tracts among the English residents of this near cathe- 
dral town. Of Gordon’s life in Pisa he heard before he 
left the ship. In the Eev. Dr. Hott he had found an 
accidental travelling companion with an eye single to the 
glory of the Established Church, who was even then be- 
moaning the lack of spiritual advantages in the town 
to which he was bound. His zealous soul rejoiced in the 
acquaintance and fostered it on arrival. The idea of 
Sabbath service in English had been the clergyman’s; 


350 : 


THE CASTAWAY 


that of the Lanfranchi Palace as a place wherein to 
gather the elect, had been Cassidy’s. The suggestion 
was not without a certain genius. To the doctor’s up- 
lifted hands he had remarked with unction that to ask 
could do no harm; and the request, even if refused, 
might he precious seed sown. Cassidy mentally pre- 
saged refusal — which should make text and material for 
future discourse of his own. 

Waiting at uhe Lanfranchi entrance he remembered 
a sermon of which he had delivered himself years be- 
fore at Hewstead Abbey — ^perched upon a table. He 
had never forgotten it. He touched his lips with his 
tongue at the pious thought that he who had then been 
master of the Abbey — ^host of that harebrained crew who 
afterward made him a butt of egregious ridicule in 
London — ^was now spurned of the righteous. 

Gordon at that hour had no thought of Cassidy, whom 
he had not seen in years. ^^Say to the messenger that 
Mr. Hott is very welcome to the use of the floor,” was 
the answer he gave the valet. 

A moment later Teresa and Count Pietro Gamba re- 
entered. Teresa’s eyes were wet and shining. Her 
brother’s face was calm. He came frankly to Gordon 
and held out his hand. 

While the two men clasped hands, the naval surgeon 
was ruminating in chagrin. Gordon’s courteous as- 
sent gave him anything but satisfaction. He took it to 
Dr. Hott’s lodgings. 

As Cassidy set foot in the street again he stopped 
suddenly and unaccountably. At the Lanfranchi portal 
in the dusk he had had a view of a swarthy face that 
roused a persistent, baffling memory. The unanticipated 


THE CASTAWAY) 


351 


reply to the message he had carried had jarred the 
puzzle from his mind. It recurred again now, and with 
a sudden stab of recollection. His teeth shut together 
with a snap. 

He lay awake half that night. At sun-up he was on 
his way back to Leghorn, with a piece of news for the 
commander of the Pylades, 


CHAPTER LI 


DR. NOTT’S sermon 

It was a thirsty afternoon. Teresa and Mary Shelley 
«^the latter, bonneted and gloved — sat at an upper win- 
dow of the palace, watching through the Venetian blinds 
the English residents of Pisa approaching by twos and 
threes the entrance belpw them. 

Dr. Nott’s service had been well advertised, and a 
pardonable curiosity to gain a view, however limited, 
of the palace’s interior, swelled the numbers. Besides 
this, one of the Lanfranchi servants had had an unlucky 
fracas with a police sergeant which, within a few hours 
of its occurrence, rumor had swollen to a formidable and 
bloody affray : Gordon had mortally wounded two police 
dragoons and taken refuge in his house, guarded by bull- 
dogs; he had been captured after a desperate resist- 
ance; forty brace of pistols had been found in the 
palace. These tales had been soon exploded, but the af- 
fair nevertheless possessed an interest on this Sunday 
afternoon. 

The pair at the window conversed on various top- 
ics : Pietro, the new member of the household, and his 
rescue in Lake Geneva, of which Mary had told Teresa ; 
Prince Mavrocordato, his patron, exiled from Wallachia,, 
(352y 


THE CASTAWAY 


353 


and watching eagerly the plans of the primates, now 
shaping to revolution, in Greece, his native country; 
Shelley^s new sail-boat, the Ariel, anchored at the river- 
bank, a stone’s throw from where they sat. As they 
talked they could hear from the adjoining study Gor- 
don’s voice reading aloud and the sharp, eager, explosive 
tones of Shelley as he commented or admired. 

Both watchers at length fell silent. The sight of the 
people below, soberly frocked and coated, so unmistak- 
ably British in habiliment and demeanor, had brought 
pensive thoughts to Mary Shelley of the England and 
Sabbaths of her girlhood. Teresa was thinking of Gor- 
don. 

Since the hour he had learned that melancholy 
news from Bagnacavallo he had not spoken of Allegra, 
but there had been a look in his face that told how 
sharply the blow had pierced. * 

If there had been a lurking jealousy of his past in 
which she had no part, it had vanished forever when he 
had said, with that patient pathos that wrung her heart : 

understand.” The words then had roused in her some- 
thing even deeper than the maternal instinct that had 
budded when she took him wounded to Casa Guiccioli, 
deeper than the utter joy with which she had felt his 
arms as they rode through the night from the villa 
where he had waked her from that deathlike coma. It 
was a sense of more intimate comprehension to which 
her whole being had vibrated ever since. 

Not but that she was conscious of struggles in him 
that she did not fully grasp. But to-day, as she sat 
silent by the window, her heart was saying: ^^His old 
life is gone — ^gone! I belong to his new life. I will 


354 


THE CASTAWAY, 


love him so that he will forget I We shall live always in 
Italy together, and he will write poems that the whole 
world will read. And some day it will know him as I 
dor 

The sound of a slow hymn rose from the floor below, 
and Teresa’s companion stole to the hall where the words 
came clearly up the marble staircase : 

“O spirit of the living God, 

In all Thy plenitude of grace. 

Where’er the foot of man hath trod. 

Descend on our apostate race.” 

As Mary listened, Teresa came and stood beside her. 
Convent bred, religion to her had meant churchings, 
candled processionals and adorations before the crucifix 
which hung always above her bed. Her mind direct, 
imaginative, yet with a natural freedom from traditional 
constraint, suffered for the home-nurtured ceremony left 
behind in her flight with Gordon. But her new experi- 
ence retained a sense of devotion deeper because more 
primitive and instinctive than these: a mystic leaning 
out toward good intelligences all about her — the pure 
longing with which she had framed the prayer for Gor- 
don so long ago. She listened eagerly now, not only be- 
cause of the priestly suggestion in the sound, but also 
from a thought that the ceremony below had been a part 
of his England. 

This was in her mind as a weighty voice intoned the 
opening sentences, to drop presently to the recitation of 
the collect for the day. 

While thus absorbed, Gordon and Shelley came and 


THE CASTAWAZ 


355 

leaned with them at the top of the stair. The congre- 
gation was responding now to the Litany: 

^^From all blindness of heart ; from pride, vain- 
glory and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred and malice, and 
all uncharitableness, 

"'Good Lord, deliver us/' 

It was not alone Mary Shelley to whom memories 
were hastening. The chant recalled to Gordon, with a 
singular, minute distinctness, the dreary hours in the 
Milbanke pew in the old church at Seaham, where he 
had passed that ^Treacle-moon^^ with Annabel. Blind- 
ness of heart, hatred, uncharitableness: he had known 
all these. 

'Trom lightning and tempest — 

One phase of his old life was lifting before him 
startlingly clear: the phase that confounded the pre- 
cept with the practice and resented hypocrisy by a whole- 
sale railing at dogma — ^the sneer with which the philo- 
sophic Eoman shrugged at the Galilean altars. The 
ancient speculation had fallen in the wreck at Venice — 
to rise again one sodden dawn in the La Mira forest. 
The discarded images had re-arisen then, but with new 
outlines. They still framed skepticism, but it was de- 
sponding, not scoffing — a hopelessness whose climax was 
reached in his souFs bitter cry to Padre Somalian at San 
Lazzarro : "If it were only true !" Since, he had learned 
the supreme awakening of love which had already 
aroused his conscience, and now in its development, that 


356 


THE castaway; 


love, lighting and warming his whole field of human 
sympathy, made him conscious of appetences hitherto 
unguessed. 

^^That it may please Thee to forgive our enemies, per- 
secutors, and slanderers, and turn their hearts ; 

"Wa leseech Thee to hear us, good Lord/' 

Gordon neither smiled now nor frowned. 

The chant died while the visitors said their adieus. 
The feeling of estrangement had been deepening in 
Shelley^s fair-haired wife. For a moment she had been 
back in old St. Giles^-in-the-Fields, whither she had 
gone so often of a Sunday from William Godwin’s 
musty book-shop. She put her hand on Shelley’s arm. 

^^Bysshe,” she whispered, ^det us stop a while as we go 
down. It seems so like old times. We can slip in at the 
back and leave before the rest. Will you ?” 

Shelley looked ruefully at his loose nankeen trousers, 
his jacket sleeves worn from handling the tiller, and 
shook his tangled hair, but seeing her wistful expression, 
acquiesced. 

^^Very well, Mary,” he said; ^^come along.” He fol- 
lowed her, shrugging his shoulders. 

At the entrance of the impromptu audience-room, 
Mary drew back uncertainly. The benches had been so 
disposed that the late-comers found themselves fronting 
the side of the audience and the center of curious eyes. 
Shelley colored at the scrutiny, but it was too late to re- 
tire, and they seated themselves in the rear. 

At the moment of their entry the Kev. Dr. Nott, in 


THE CASTAWAY 


357 


cassock and surplice, having laid off the priest (he was 
an exact high-churchman) was kissing the center of the 
preacher^s stole. He settled the garment on his shoul- 
ders with satisfaction. He had been annoyed at the dis- 
appearance of Cassidy, on whose aid he had counted for 
many preliminary details, but the presence of the author 
of ^^Queen Mab” more than compensated. This would 
indeed be good seed sown. He proceeded with zeal to 
the text of his sermon : 

^TTe are of your father the devil, and the lusts of 
your father ye will do.^^ 

A flutter winged among the benches and the blood flew 
to Mary’s cheek as he doled the words a second time. 

With his stay in the town, the clergyman’s concern 
had grown at the toleration with which it regarded the 
presence of this reprobated apostle of hellish unbelief. 
The thought had been strong in his mind as he wrote 
his sermon. This was an opportunity to sound the 
alarum of faith. His face shone with ardor. 

The doctor possessed a vocabulary. His voice was so- 
norous, his vestments above reproach. He was under the 
very roof of Asteroth, with the visible presence of anti- 
Christ before his eyes. The situation was inspiratory. 
From a brief judicial arraignment of skepticism, he 
launched into allusions unmistakably personal, beneath 
which Mary Shelley sat quivering with resentment, her 
softer sentiment of lang syne turned to bitter regret. 
Furtive glances were upon the pair; Pisa — ^the English 
part of it — ^was enjoying a new sensation. 

A pained, flushing wonder was in Shelley’s diffident, 
bright eyes as the clergyman, with outstretched arm, 
thundered toward them the warning of Paul : 


358 


THE CASTAWAY 


^^Beware lest any man spoil you through philoso- 
phy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the 
rudiments of the world! Their throat is an open 
sepulcher ; the poison of asps is under their lips/^ 

Mary’s hand had found her husband’s. ^^Let us go,” 
he said in an undertone, and drew her to her feet. They 
passed to the door, the cynosure of observation, the 
launched utterance pursuing them: 

^^Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, and 
the way of peace have they not known.” 

In the street Mary turned to him. ^^Don’t mind, 
Bysshe,” she pleaded. 

He half smiled, but his eyes were feverishly bright. 
He kissed her as he answered : 

^T’m going for a sail. Don’t worry if I’m not back 
to-night. I’ll run up to Via Keggia. The wind will do 
me good.” 

He crossed the pavement bareheaded and leaped into 
his sail-boat. A moment later, from the bridge, she saw 
through clouding tears the light craft careening down 
the Arno toward the sea. 

The agitated ripple of the audience that followed their 
exit was not yet stilled when the discourse was strangely 
interrupted. From the pavement came the sound of 
running feet, a hoarse shout and a shot, ringing out 
sharply on the Sabbath stillness. 

A second later a man dashed panting into the outer 
haU with a British marine at his heels. 


CHAPTEE LII 


TREVANIOIT m THE TOILS 

In sending Trevanion that day to the barracks on the 
Lnng’ Arno — whose door Cassidy had once seen him 
enter and in whose vicinity the naval surgeon, following 
this clue, had posted his squad of tars — luck had fallen 
oddly. The coursed hare has small choice of burrow. 
The Lanfranchi entrance was the quarry^s only loophole 
and he took it. 

As the hunted man sprang across the threshold he 
snatched the great iron key from the lock and swung it 
on the head of his pursuer. The marine dropped with a 
cut forehead, falling full in the doorway of the room 
where the service was in progress. 

Instantly the gathering was in confusion. The ser- 
mon ceased, women screamed and their escorts poured 
into the hall to meet Cassidy, entering from the street, 
flushed and exultant, with a half-dozen more blue- 
jackets. 

His foremost pursuer fallen, Trevanion leaped like 
a stag for the stair. But half-way up he stopped at 
sight of a figure from whom he could hope no grace. 
Gordon had heard the signal-shot, armed himself and 
hastened to the stairway. 

( 359 )’ 


360 


THE CASTAWAY 


Por once in his life Cassidy was oblivious of things 
religious. He had forgot the afternoon’s service. He 
scarcely saw Dr. Hott’s horror-lifted hands as his cas- 
sock fluttered between frightened worshipers to the door. 
His look did not travel to Gordon or beyond, where Te- 
resa’s agitated face watched palely. His round, peering 
eyes fastened with malignant triumph on the lowering 
figure midway of the marble ascent. 

"How, my fine ensign,” he said with exultation, "what 
have you to say to a trip to the Pylades f ” 

Trevanion’s dark face whitened. But his hand still 
gripped the key. 

"I had enough of your cursed ship !” he flung in surly 
deflance, "and you’ll not take me, either.” 

Cassidy laughed and turned to the seamen at his back. 
They stepped forward. 

In Gordon’s mind, in that moment of tension, crucial 
forces were weirdly contending. Over the heads of the 
group below, through the open door, he saw a ship’s 
jolly-boat, pulling along the Arno bank. Leghorn — ^the 
Pylades — and years in a military fortress. That was 
what it meant for Trevanion. And what for him ? The 
peace he coveted, a respite of persecution, for him and 
for Teresa — ^the right to live and work unmolested. 

It was a lawless act — seizure unwarranted and on a 
foreign soil; an attempt daring but not courageous — 
they were ten against one. It was a deed of personal 
and private revenge on the part of Cassidy. And the 
man had taken refuge under his roof. For any other 
he would have interposed from a sheer sense of justice 
and hatred of hypocrisy. But for Mm — a poltroon, a 
skulker, and — ^his enemy? 


THE CASTAWAY 


361 


What right had he to interfere? The manner was 
high-handed, but the penalty owed to British admiralty 
was just. It was not his affair. The hour he had sat 
in the moonlight near the Eavenna osteria, when his 
conscience had accepted this Nemesis, he had put away 
the temptation to harm him ; though the other’s weapon 
had struck, he had lifted no hand. He had left all to 
fate. And fate was arranging now. He had not sum- 
moned those marines ! 

But through these strident voices sounded a clearer 
one in his soul. It was not for that long-buried shame 
and cowardice in Greece — not for the attempt on his 
life at Bagnacavallo, nor for anything belonging to the 
present — ^that Trevanion stood now in this plight. It 
was ostensibly for an act antedating either, one he him- 
self had known and mentally condoned years ago — a 
boy’s desertion from a hateful routine. If he let him 
be taken now, was he not a party to Cassidy’s revenge ? 
Would he be any better than Cassidy? Would it be in 
him also any less than an ignoble and personal retalia- 
tion — what he had promised himself, come what might, 
he would not seek ? 

He strode down the stair, past Trevanion, and faced; 
the advancing marines. 

^Tardon me,” he said. ^^This man is in my house. 
By what right do you pursue him ?” 

The blue- jackets stopped. A blotch of red sprang in 
Cassidy’s straw-colored cheeks. 

^^He is a deserter from a king’s ship. These marines 
are under orders. Hinder them at your peril !” 

^^This is Italy, not the high seas,” rejoined Gordon 


362 


THE CASTAWAY 


calmly, ^^ritish law does not reach here. You may 
say that to the captain of the Pylades/* 

Cassidy turned furiously to his men. ^^Go on and 
take him!^^ he commanded. 

Again they advanced, but they looked full into Gor- 
don’s pistol and the voice behind it said : 

^^That, under this roof, no man shall do! On my 
word as a peer of England !” 

A few moments later, Cassidy, his face purpled with 
disappointment, had led his marines into the street, 
the agitated clergyman had gathered his flock again, 
and the hall was clear. 

A postern gate opened from the Lanfranchi garden 
and to this Gordon led Trevanion without a word. The 
latter passed out with eyes that did not meet his de- 
liverer’s. 

As Gordon climbed the stairway to where Teresa 
waited, shaken with the occurrence, the Eev. Dr. Hott 
was rounding the services so abruptly terminated with 
the shorter benediction: 

^The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love 
of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with 
us all evermore. Amenf* 


CHAPTER Lin 


THE COMING OF DALLAS 

^^Go on, Dallas/^ said Gordon. 

He was standing in his study, its windows thrown 
open to the stifling air, the blinds drawn against the 
pitiless sun that beat hotly up from the sluggish Arno 
and loaded the world with Are. In the parched orange- 
trees in the garden cicalas shrilled and from the dusty 
street came the chant of a procession of religiosi, bear- 
ing relics and praying for rain. 

The man who sat by the table wore the same kindl}’^, 
scholarly face that Gordon had known of old, though 
his soft white hair was sparer at the temples. To make 
this journey he had spent the last of a check he had 
once received for six hundred pounds. His faith in 
Gordon had never wavered. Now, as he looked at the 
figure standing opposite, clad in white waistcoat and 
tartan hussar-braided jacket of the Gordon plaid, young 
and lithe, though with brown locks grayed, and with 
eyes brilliantly haunting and full of a purpose they had 
never before possessed, his own gaze misted with hope 
and wistfulness. He had had an especial object in this 
long journey to Italy. 

^^Hobhouse is still with his regiment,^^ he proceeded* 
( 363 ) 


364 : 


THE CASTAWAY 


be in Parliament before long. We dined together 
just a month ago to-night at White’s Club. Lord Pe- 
tersham is the leader of the dandies now. Brummell 
left England for debt.” 

In that hour’s conversation Gordon had seen faded 
pictures fearfully distinct. He seemed to be standing 
again in his old lodgings in St. James Street — a red 
carnation in his buttonhole — ^facing Beau Brummell 
and Sheridan. He remembered how he had once let the 
old wit down in his cocked hat at Brookes’ — as he had 
long ago been let down into his grave ! He smiled pain- 
fully while he said with slowness : 

^^Three great men ruined in one year: Bonaparte, 
Brummell and I. A king, a cad, and a castaway !” His 
eyes were fixed on the empty fireplace as he spoke, but 
what they saw was very far away. 

^^How is Murray ?” he asked presently. 

'T visited him a fortnight before I left. He had just 
published the first part of ^Don Juan’.” 

Gordon winced. ^^Well?” he asked. 

^^He put only the printer’s name on the title-page. 
The day it appeared he went to the country and shut 
himself up. He had not even dared open his letters.” 

can’t blame him — Gordon’s voice was metallic — 
^'Moore wrote me the attorney-general would probably 
suppress it.” 

‘‘1 carried him the reviews,” continued Dallas, 
can guess their verdict !” 

The other shook his head with an eager smile that 
brightened his whole countenance. ^^A few condemned, 
of course. Many hedged. But the Edinburgh Re- 
view — 


THE CASTAWAY 


365 


Jeffrey. What did he say?^^ 

The answer came with a vibrant emphasis: ^That 
every word was touched with immortality!” 

Gordon turned^, surprised into wonder. His anc ient 
detractor, whose early blow had struck from the lint 
in his soul that youthful flash, his dynamic Satire. The 
literary Nero whose nod had killed Keats. Was the 
old sneer become praise — now? Immortality! — not 
‘^damned to everlasting fame”? A glow of color came 
to his face. 

The older man got up hastily and laid his hand 
affectionately on the other’s shoulder. It seemed the 
moment to say what was on his mind. His voice shook : 

^^George, come back to England ! Do not exile your- 
self longer. It is ready to forget its madness and to 
regret. Public feeling has changed ! When Lady Car- 
oline Lamb published ^Glenarvon,’ her novel that made 
you out a man-monster, it did not sell an edition. She 
appeared at Lady Jersey’s masquerade as Don Juan in 
the costume of a Mephistopheles, and the crowd even 
hissed. London is waiting for you, George! All it 
gave you once shall be yours again. You have only to 
come back!” 

It was out at last, the purport of his journey. 

Gordon felt his muscles grow rigid. The meaning of 
other things Dallas had told — ^gossip of society and the 
clubs — was become apparent. Could the tide have 
turned, then? Could it be that the time had come 
when his presence could reverse the popular verdict,, 
cover old infamy and quench in renewed reputation 
the poisoned enmity that had poured desolation on 
his path ? The fawning populace that had made of hi& 


36G 


THE CASTAWAY 


domestic life only a shredded remnant, hounded him 
to the wilds and entombed him in black infamy — did it 
think now to reestablish the dishonored idol on its ped- 
estal ? 

For an instant the undiked memory of all he had 
undergone swept over him in a stifling wave. The 
months of self-control faded.' The new man that had 
been born in the forest of La Mira fell away. The old 
rage rose to clutch at his throat — ^the flery, ruthless 
deflance that had lashed his enemies in Almack’s As- 
sembly Eooms. It drove the color from his face and 
lent flame to his eyes as he answered hoarsely: 

^^Ho ! Never — never again ! It is over forever. When 
I wrote then, it was not for the world^s pleasure or 
pride. I wrote from the fullness of my mind, from pas- 
sion, from impulse. And since I would not flatter their 
opinions, they drove me out — the shilling scribblers and 
scoundrels of priests, who do more harm than all the 
infidels who ever forgot their catechisms, and who, if 
the Christ they profess to worship reappeared, would 
again crucify Him! Since then I have fed the lamp 
burning in my brain with tears from my eyes and with 
blood from my heart. It shall burn on without them 
to the endP 

His old tutor’s hand had dropped from his shoulder. 
Dallas was crestfallen and disconcerted. He turned 
away to the window and looked out sadly over the 
Arno, where a ship’s launch floated by with band in- 
struments playing. 

For Gordon the rage passed as quickly as it had come. 
The stubborn demon that had gnashed at its fetters fell 
back. A feeling of shame suddenly possessed him. 


THE CASTAWAY 


3Gr 

^'Scoundrels of priests!” He thought of Padre So- 
malian with a swift sense of contrition that his most 
reckless phraseology had never roused in the old days. 

Standing there, regaining his temperate control, a 
sound familiar, yet long unheard, floated in from out 
of doors. It was a strain belonging to the past that 
had come so sharply home to him — ^the sound of the 
music on the launch in the river playing "God save the 
King.^^ 

It fell on Gordon^s ear with a strange thrill. A tinge 
of softer warmth crept back slowly to his cheeks. For 
the first time in these years the hatred of his country 
that had darkled in the silt of ignominy vanished and 
a tenderer feeling took its place. It was the inalien- 
able instinct of the Englishman, the birthright of 
English blood, transmitted to him through long lines 
of ancestry, from Norman barons who came with Wil- 
liam the Conqueror, welling up now, strong and sweet 
and not to be denied. England! He had loved it 
once! In spite of a rebellious birth, an acid home, a 
harsh combative youth, he had loved it ! How often he 
had heard that air — at Vauxhall — ^in the Mall — on the 
Thames! It brought back the smell of primroses, of 
blossoming yellow thorn and hazel-catkins quivering in 
the hedges. Some lost spring of recollection, automat- 
ically touched, showed him the balcony of his house on 
Piccadilly Terrace on the regent’s birthday — below, 
the rattling of curbs and scabbards, the Hussar band 
playing that tune — ^he himself sitting with Annabel, 
and in her arms, Ada, his child ! There were questions, 
unvoiced as yet, which he had longed but dreaded to 
ask. His hand strayed to his breast. There, always 


368 


THE CASTAWAY 


worn, was a tress of baby^s hair. What might his re- 
habilitation have meant to her, as she grew and took 
her place in the world? 

He approached the window and touched the man who 
looked out. 

^^Dallas!” he said. Dallas!” 

The other turned. His eyes were moist. He saw the 
alteration in Gordon’s mood. 

^^George,” he urged huskily, ^^do you not owe it to 
some one else ?” 

There was some one else — not the one Dallas meant — 
some one he had not seen ! Gordon’s gaze turned, too, 
to the river, flowing now like liquid lead with an oily 
scum under a smoky char that, while they talked, had 
been swiftly rising to paint out the quivering track of 
the sun. The launch was speeding for the opposite 
landing, the musicians covering their instruments. 
Even if all Dallas said were true ! Go back — ^and leave 
Teresa ? For Ada’s sake, who would live to bear his 
name, to return to an empty reinstatement, and stifle 
with the pulpy ashes of dead fires this love that warmed 
his new life! For Ada’s sake — ^go back, and leave 
Teresa ? 

The visitor spoke again. When he had asked that 
question, a child not a woman had been in his thought. 
He had not told all he had come to say. 

have been to Seaham, George; I went to Lady 
Noel’s funeral.” 

His hearer started. ^^You saw Ada?” he asked, his 
features whitening. ^Y'ou saw her?” He clutched 
Dallas’ wrist. ^^She is six years old. Did she speak my 
name, Dallas ? What do they teach her of me ?” 


THE CASTAWAY 


369 


The other’s tone was almost as* strained; the story 
he had to tell was a hard one. 

^^Your portrait, the large one painted the year you 
were married, hung above the mantelpiece. It was 
covered with a heavy curtain. Lady HoeFs will for- 
bade that the child should see it before her twentieth 
year. Laddie, Ada has never heard your name!*' 

Dallas stopped abruptly at the look on Gordon’s face. 
!N^o anger showed there, only the dull gray of mortal 
hurt. A curious moaning sound had arisen, forerunner 
of the sultry tempest that had been gathering, rapid 
as anger. The cicalas had ceased shrilling from the 
garden. A peculiar warm dampness was in the air 
and a drop of rain splashed on the marble sill. 

^^Do you wonder,” Dallas continued after a pause, 
^That I want you to go back ?” 

Gordon made no reply. His eyes were focused on a 
purple stain of storm mounting to the zenith, like some 
caryatid upholding a caldron of steam, all ink and 
cloud color, while before it slaty masses of vapor fled 
like monstrous behemoths, quirted into some gigantic 
sky-inclosure. 

Dallas pulled the window shut. 

With the action, unheralded as doom, a great violet 
sword of lightning wrote the autograph of God across 
the sky, and a shock of thunder, instantaneous and 
crashing like near ordnance, shook the walls of the pal- 
ace. It loosed the vicious pandemonium of the tropic air 
into tornado, sudden and appalling. 

While the echoes of that detonation still reverberated, 
into the room, as though hurled from the wing of the 


570 


THE CASTAWAY 


unleashed wind, came Mary Shelley, drenched with the 
rain, bareheaded, gasping. 

‘^Shelley’s boat has not returned!” she wailed. 
is at sea in the storm. Oh, I am afraid — afraid — 
afraid !” 

Teresa entered at the moment with a frightened face, 
loose-haired and pale, and Mary ran to her, sobbing. 

Gordon had turned from the window, but his coun- 
tenance was void and expressionless. ^^Shelley?” he 
repeated vacantly, and sat down heavily in the nearest 
chair. 

Teresa suddenly put the arms of the weeping girl 
aside and ran to him. 

‘‘^Gordon!” she cried, as Dallas hurried forward in 
alarm. ^^Gordon, what is it?” 

‘^England — Teresa — ” he said. Then his head fell 
forward against her breast. 

For twelve hours, while the wild, typhoon-like storm 
raved and shrieked over Pisa, Gordon lay seemingly in 
a deep sleep. He did not wake till the next dawn was 
breaking, wetly bright and cool. When he woke, it was 
to healthful life, without recollection of pain or vision. 

And yet in those hours intervening, strange things 
happened hundreds of leagues away in England. 

Has genius, that epilepsy of tte soul, a shackled 
self, which under rare stress can leave the flesh for a 
pilgrimage whose memory is afterward hidden in that 
clouded abyss that lies between its waking and its 
dreaming? Did some subtle telepathy exist between 
his soul in Italy and the soul that he had transmitted 
to his child ? Who can tell ? 


THE CASTAWAY 


371 


But that same afternoon, while one George Gordon, 
lay moveless in the Lanfranchi library, another George 
Gordon wrote his name in the visitor’s book at the 
king’s palace, in St. James Park, London. Lady Caro- 
line Lamb, from her carriage seat, saw him entering 
Palace Yard and took the news to Melbourne House. 
The next morning’s papers were full of his return. 

That night, too, she who had once been Annabel Mil- 
banke, woke unaccountably in her room at Seaham, in 
the county of Durham, to find the trundle-bed in which 
her little daughter Ada slept, empty. 

She roused a servant and searched. In the drawing- 
room a late candle burned, and here, in her night- 
gown, the wee wanderer was found, tearless, wide-awake 
and unafraid, gazing steadfastly above the mantle- 
piece. 

The mother looked and cried out. The curtain had 
fallen from its fastenings, and the child was looking 
at her father’s portrait. 


CHAPTER LIV 


THE PYEE 

Over the hillocks, under the robed boughs of the 
Pisan forest, went a barouche, drawn by four post- 
horses ready to drop from the intensity of the noonday 
sun. In it were Gordon and Dallas. They had been 
strangely silent during this ride. Prom time to time 
Dallas wiped his forehead and murmured of the heat. 
Gordon answered in monosyllables. 

They had reached a lonely stretch of beach-wilder- 
ness, broken by tufts of underwood, gnawed by tempests 
and stunted by the barren soil. Before it curved the 
blue windless Mediterranean, cradling the Isle of Elba. 
Behind, the view was bounded by the Italian Alps, vol- 
canic crags of white marble, white and sulphury like 
a frozen h’lrricane. Across the sandy extent, at equal 
distances, rose high, square battlemented towers, guard- 
ing the coast from smugglers. 

Gordon’s gaze, though it was fixed on the spot they 
were approaching, saw only a woman’s desolated form 
clasped in Te: esa’s sympathizing arms. 

At a spot marked by the withered trunk of a fir- 
tree, near a ramshackle hut covered with reeds — a flimsy 
shelter for night patrols — ^the vehicle stopped and Gor- 
( 372 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


373 


don descended. A little way off was pitched a tent, by 
which stood a group of mounted dragoons and Italian 
laborers, the latter with mattocks in their hands. A 
single figure came from the group and greeted him. 

It was Trevanion. Gordon had not seen him since 
the hour of that Sabbath service from which Shelley 
had fied — ^to the fatal storm whose wrecks strewed the 
sand where they now stood. Since Mary Shelley had 
rushed into the Lanfranchi Palace with that cry of 
terror and foreboding, days had passed: days of sick 
search, hurrying couriers, wild speculation and fearful 
hope. All this had ended with the message from Tre- 
vanion which had sent the laborers and brought the 
barouche to-day to the lonely spot where the sea had 
given up its dead. 

The man who had sent this message was unkempt 
and unshaven, his swarthy face clay-pale, his black eyes 
bloodshot. He had searched the coast day and night, 
sleepless and savage. There had been desperation in his 
toil. In his semi-barbaric blood had raged a curious 
conflict between his hatred of Gordon and something 
roused by the other’s act in delivering him from Cas- 
sidy’s marines. He was by instinct an Oriental, and 
instinct led him to revenge;. but his strain of Welsh 
blood made his enemy’s magnanimity unforgeftable and 
had driven him to this fierce effort for an impersonal 
requital. Because Shelley had been the friend of the 
man he hated but who had aided him, the deed in some 
measure satisfied the crude remorse that fought with 
his vulpine enmity. 

Almost touching the creeping lip of surf, three wands 
stood upright in the sand. Trevanion beckoned the 


374 


THE CASTAWAY 


laborers and they began to dig in silence. At length 
a hollow sound followed the thrust of a mattock. 

Gordon drew nearer. He heard leadenly the mut- 
tered conversation of the workmen as they waited, lean- 
ing on their spades — saw but dimly the uniforms of the 
dragoons. He scarcely felt the hot sand scorching his 
feet. 

Was the object they had unearthed that whimsical 
youth whom he had seen first in the Fleet Prison ? The 
unvarying friend who had searched him out at San 
Lazzarro — ^true-hearted, saddened but not resentful for 
the world’s contumely, his gaze unwavering from that 
empyrean in which swam his lustrous ideals? This 
battered fiotsam of the tempest — could this be Shelley ? 

From the pocket of the faded blue jacket a book pro- 
truded. He stooped and drew it out. It was the di- 
pus” of Sophocles, doubled open. 

“Aidoneus! Aidoneus, I implore 
Grant thou the stranger wend his way 
To that dim land that houses all the dead. 

With no long agony or voice of woe. 

For so, though many evils undeserved 
Upon his life have fallen, 

God, the All- Just, shall raise him up again!” 

He lifted his eyes from the page as Trevanion spoke 
his name. He followed him to the tent. Beside it the 
laborers had heaped a great mass of driftwood and 
fagots gathered from a stunted pine-growth. 

Shuffling footsteps fell behind him — ^he knew they 
were bearing the body. He averted his eyes, smelling 
the pungent, aromatic odors of the frankincense, wine 
and salt that were poured over all. 


THE CASTAWAY 


375 


Trevanion came from the tent with a torch and put it 
into his hands. Gordon^s fingers shook as he held it to 
the fagots, but he did the work thoroughly, lighting all 
four corners. Then he fiung the torch into the sea, 
climbed the slope of a dune and sat down, feeling for 
an instant a giddiness, half of the sun’s heat and half 
of pure horror. 

The flames had leaped up over the whole pyre, glisten- 
ing with wavy yellow and deep indigo, as though giving 
to the atmosphere the glassy essence of vitality itself. 
Save for their rustle and the shrill scream of a solitary 
curlew, wheeling in narrow fearless circles about the 
fiery altar, there was no sound. 

Sitting apart on the yellow sand, his eyes on the 
flame quivering upward like an offering of orisons and 
aspirations, tremulous and radiant, the refrain of Ariel 
came to Gordon: 

“Of his bones are coral made; 

Those are pearls, that were his eyes: 

Nothing of him that doth fade, 

But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange.” 

Had Shelley been right? Was death, for Christian 
or pagan, only a part of the inwoven design, glad or 
sad, on that veil which hides from us some high reality ? 
Was Dallas — ^was Padre Somalian — ^nearer right than 
his own questioning that had ended in negation ? Had 
Sheridan found the girl wife he longed for — ^beyond 
the questioning and the stars? And was that serene 
soul, whose body now sifted to its primal elements, 
walking free somewhere in a universe of loving intelli- 


THE CASTAWAY 


376 

gence which to him, George Gordon, had been at most 
only ^The Great Mechanism"? 

At length he rose. Th<e group in the lee of the tent 
had approached the pyre. He heard wondering excla- 
mations. Going nearer, he saw that of Shelley^s body 
there remained only a heap of white ashes — and the 
heart. This the flames had refused to touch. 

He felt a strange sensation dart through every nerve. 
Trevanion thrust in his hand and took it from the em- 
bers. 

Gordon turned to the barouche, where Dallas leaned 
back watching, pale and grave. He had brought an 
oaken box from Pisa, and returning with this to the 
beach, he gathered in it the wine-soaked ashes and laid 
the heart upon them. His pulses were thrilling and 
leaping to a wild man-hysteria. 

As he replaced the coffer in the carriage he saw Tre- 
vanion wading knee-deep in the cool surf. He settled 
the box between his knees and the horses toiled labori- 
ously toward the homeward road. 

A sound presently rose behind them. It was Tre- 
vanion, shouting at the curlew circling above his head 
—a wild, savage scream of laughter. 

Gordon clenched his hands on the edge of the seat 
and a great tearless sob broke from his breast. It was 
the release of the tense bow-string — ^the scattering of 
all the bottled grief and horror that possessed him. 

He became aware after a time that Dallas was read- 
ing aloud. The latter had picked up the blistered copy 
of the dipus” and was translating. 

As he listened to the flowing lines, a mystical change 
was wrought in George Gordon. With a singular ac- 


THE CASTAWAY 


377 


curacy of estimation, his mind set the restless cravings 
of his own past over against Shelley’s placid tempera- 
ment — his long battle bes!^*^ the other’s acquiescence. 
He had been the simoon, Shelley the trade-wind. He 
had razed, Shelley had reconstructed. His own doubts 
had pointed him: — where? Shelley had been meditat- 
ing on immortality when he met the end. 

The end? Or was it only the beginning? ^^God, the 
All- Just, shall raise him up again!” — ^the phrase was 
running in his mind as they reentered the palace that 
afternoon. 

Fletcher handed him a card in the library. 

^^The gentleman came with Prince Mavrocordato,” he 
said. ‘^They wished me to say to your lordship they 
would return this evening.” 

The card read : 


LIEUTENANT EDWARD BLAQUIERE 

The Greek 

Revolutionary Committee London 


CHAPTER LV 


THE CALL 

In the Lanfranchi library with Gordon four men 
were seated in attitudes of interest and attention. Dal- 
las’ chair was pushed far back in the shadow and his 
hand shaded his eyes from the early candles. Opposite 
was Count Pietro Gamba, his alert profile and blond 
beard looking younger than ever beside the darker 
'Asiatic comeliness of Mavrocordato. At the table, a 
map spread before him, his clean-cut, wiry features 
full in the light, sat the stranger who had left the card 
— ^Lieutenant Blaquiere, of London, spokesman of the 
Greek Revolutionary committee. The latter went on 
now, with a certain constrained eagerness, his hand 
thrown out across the mahogany: 

^‘The standard was raised when Hypsilantes invaded 
Wallachia and declared Greece free. The defeat of his 
ten thousand means little. The spirit of the na- 
tion is what counts, and that, my lord, through all the 
years of Turkish dominion, has never died.” 

For an hour the visitor had talked, sketching graph- 
ically and succinctly the plans and hopes of the revolu- 
tionists in Greece, the temporary organization effected, 
the other juntas forming, under the English commit- 
( 378 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


379 


tee’s leadership, in Germany and Switzerland. He was 
deliberate and impressive. Pietro, enthusiastic for the 
cause of his patron, Mavrocordato, had been voluble 
with questions. Even Dallas had asked not a few. Gor- 
don, the host, had been of them all most silent. 

He had felt an old vision of his youth grow instinct 
again. Blaquiere’s words seemed now not to be spoken 
within four walls, but to ring out of the distance of 
an Uncouth shore, with strange stern mountains rising 
nea , a kettle simmering on a fire of sticks, and calm 
stars looking down on a minaretted town. 

“The mountains look on Marathon — 

And Marathon looks on the sea; 

And musing there an hour alone, 

I dreamed that Greece might still he free!” 

The verse hummed in his mind. Was it years ago he 
had written that ? Or only yesterday ? A dream — that 
had been all ! It had faded with his other visions, one 
day when he had waked to fame, when he had bartered 
them for the bubble of celebrity, the flitter-gold of ad- 
miration! In those old days, he thought with bitter- 
ness, he would have been an eager spirit in the English 
movement. Then he had sat in Parliament; now he 
was an expatriate adventurer, a disqualified attache of 
the kingless Court of Letters ! 

One thing he still could do. Eevolution needed muni- 
tions, parks of artillery, hospital stores. Money could 
furnish these — it was the sinews of war. If such were 
the object of Blaquiere’s visit, he should not be disap- 
pointed. He possessed, unentailed, hTewstead Abbey, 
the seat of his ancestors, to whose memory he had clung 


380 


THE CASTAWAY 


fondly through all his ostracism — and there were his 
coal lands of Kochdale. The latter could be realized on 
without difficulty. His sister had a private fortune of 
her own. Ada, his child, had been provided for at her 
birth. Eochdale should bring close upon thirty thou- 
sand pounds. 

He spoke to Blaquiere: 

^^Lieutenant, Greece had my earliest songs. She 
shall have what she can use to far better advantage now. 
Mr. Dallas, who starts for London to-morrow, will take 
iJack my authority for the sale of certain properties 
whose proceeds shall be turned over to your committee 
there.” 

Mavrocordato’s face flushed with feeling. He turned 
his eyes on Blaquiere. A glance of understanding passed 
between them, and the latter rose. 

^^Your lordship,” he said, ^^the thanks of our commit- 
tee are small return for such a gift. The gratitude of 
Greece will be an ampler recompense. But — I am 
here to ask yet more than this.” 

As Gordon gazed inquiringly, he laid two documents 
before him on the table : 

^^Will your lordship read?” 

Gordon took up the first. A tremor leaped to his 
lips. He saw his own credentials, signed by the full 
committee in London, as their representative — m 
Greece. His eye caught the well-known, cramped chi- 
rography of John Hobhouse among the signatures. 

Eor a moment his heart seemed to stop. He looked 
at the second, glancing at the names affiised: ^^Alex- 
ander Hypsilantes” — "'Marco Botzaris” — a dozen Greek 


THE CASTAWAY 


381 


primates and leaders. The name of one man there 
present had been added — Mavrocordato. 

As he read, the room was very still. The deep breath- 
ing of the men who waited seemed to fill it. He heard; 
Blaqniere’s voice piercing through: 

^^The revolution needs now only a supreme leader. 
Your lordship is known and loved by the Greek people 
as is no other. The petty chieftains, whose inveterate 
ambitions now embroil a national cause, for such a 
rallying-point would lay aside their quarrels. With 
your great name foreign loans would be certain. Such 
is the unanimous opinion of the committee in London, 
my lord.^^ 

Dallas^ snuff-box dropped to the floor. Gamba made 
a sudden movement, but Mavrocordato’s hand, laid on 
his knee, stilled him. 

A flush, vivid on its paleness, had come to Gordon’s 
cheek — an odd sensation of confusion that overspread 
the instant’s elation. If the Greek people loved him, 
it was for what he had written years ago, not for 
what he was now, a discredited wanderer among the 
nations! With what real motive did the committee in 
London place this great cause in his hand? Did they 
offer it in sincere belief, as to one whom England had 
misjudged and to whom she owed restitution — a lover of 
liberty, one capable of a true deed, of judgment, dis- 
cernment and high results? A tingling pang went 
through him. Ho. But to one whose name was famed 
— how famed! — whose attachment to the revolution 
would draw to the struggle the eyes of the world , — to 
assure foreign loans! 

He rose and walked to the window, his throat tighten- 


382 


THE CASTAWAY 

ing. Ho one spoke, though young Gamba stirred rest- 
lessly. Dallas was peering into his' recovered snuff-box, 
and Blaquiere sat movelessly watchin-^. 

As Gordon looked out into the dimming diisk and the 
i sky’s blue garden blossoming with pale stars, the new 
self that had been developing in conscience gained its 
ascendancy. What should it matter to him, why or 
how the opportunity came? To Hobhouse, at least, 
it had been an act of faith and friendship. As a body, 
the committee had considered only its object, political 
advantage to England — ^the success of the Greek revo- 
lutionary arms. Why should he ache so fiercely for 
that juster valuation which would never be given? 
Was it not enough that the cause was one which had 
been the brightest dream of his youth ; that sober opin- 
ion deemed his effort able to advance it? 

His mind overran the past years. He saw Mmself 
putting away the old savage indifference and insolent 
disdain, and struggling for a fresh foothold on life. 
The malice that had pursued him in Trevanion he had 
accepted unresistingly, as part of an ordained necessity. 
But with the unfolding of the new conception and char- 
acter he had come to realize that, as the most inti- 
mate elements of his own destruction had lain within 
himself, so only to himself could he look for self-re- 
trieval. 

And was that retrieval to be found in the fatu- 
ous passiveness behind which he had intrenched him- 
self? If there were an appointed destiny, it could not 
lie that way, but rather in the meeting of the issues fate 
offered, the doing of a worthy deed for the deed’s own 
sake, the making real of an heroic dream — ^putting aside 


THil CASTAWAY 


383 


the paltry pride that cavilled how or why that issue was 
presented — withou •, reckoning save of the final outcome. 

He thought of an oaken box now on its way to a cem- 
etery in Eome. What would the man whose ashes it 
held have replied ? He needed no answer to that ! 

As he pondered, from the shadowy garden, under the 
orange trees woven with the warm scents of summer, 
rose a soft strain. It was Teresa, singing to her harp, 
her voice burdened to-night with the grief of Mary 
Shelley — ^the song Gordon had long ago written to a 
plaintive Hindoo refrain. 

Low as the words were, they came clearly into the 
silence : 


“Oh ! — my lonely — ^lonely — lonely — Pillow ! 

Where is my lover? Where is my lover? 

Is it his bark which my dreary dreams discover? 

Far — far away! and alone along the billow? 

Oh! my lonely — lonely — lonely — Pillow’ 

Why must my head ache where his gentle brow lay? 
How the long night flags lovelessly and slowly, 

And my head droops over thee like the willow!” 

Gordon^s gaze had turned in the direction of the 
sound. He could see her sitting in her favorite spot, 
her hair a dusk of starlight, leaning to her harp. If 
she only had not sung that — now ! 

do not ask a hasty answer,^’ — ^Blaquiere was speak- 
ing again, — "fit is not a light proposal. Your lordship 
will wish time — 

The man to whom he spoke put out his hand with a 
sudden gesture. ""Wait,’^ he said. 

What need of time ? Would ^ ^ay, a week, make him 


384 


THE CASTAWAY 


more able? Through the turmoil of new emotions he 
reasoned swiftly. 

There were two to consider: the woman he loved, 
whose singing voice he heard, and Ada, his child. If 
for Teresa’s happiness he put aside this call, what 
then? A continuance of life in this fond refuge he 
had found here in Italy — in time, peace and quiet, 
perhaps. But a happiness cankered for them both by 
the recollection of what he might have done, but would 
not. And for Ada? The knowledge that he had once 
failed a supreme cause. 

The song rose again. Pietro Gamba’s face turned 
suddenly tender. 

“Oh! thou, my sad and solitary Pillow! 

Send me kind dreams to keep my heart from breaking. 
In return for the tears I shed upon thee waking; 

Let me not die till he comes back o’er the billow!” 

If he went — and did not return. 

To die worthily, for a great cause — though he be but 
one of the many waves that break upon the shore before 
the tide can reach its mark. To forward the splendid 
march of freedom against the barbarian. To lead 
Greece toward its promised land, even though he him- 
, self be, like Moses, destined to see it but afar off. The 
world could sneer or praise, as it chose. It might at- 
tribute to him the highest motives or the most vain- 
glorious. Some time it would understand. It would 
have his Memoirs, his final bequest to Ada. 

He thought of a picture in England, hidden behind 
a curtain lest his daughter should grow up to know the 
features of her father. ^^By their deeds ye shall know 


THE CASTAWAY 


385 


— ^the saying possessed him. Far kinder his going 
for her memory of him ! 

Better for Teresa. Her brother remained to care 
for her. She had in her own right only the dowry 
returned to her from the Guiccioli coffers with her 
papal separation. But by selling Newstead Abbey — 
Dallas could arrange that — ^he could put her beyond 
the reach of want forever. Better far for her! In 
her recollection it would cover the stain of that life in 
Venice from which her hand had drawn him, and leave 
her love a higher, nobler thing. 

He lifted his head suddenly and addressed Blaquierei 
will go,^^ he said. 


CHAPTER LVI 


THE FAREWELL 

In the garden the roses were as fragrant, the 
orange trees as spicy-sweet as ever, every sound and 
scent as in so many evenings past. Yet Teresa’s eyes 
were heavy, her heart like lead within her breast. 

Since the hour she had sung to her harp — it lay beside 
her now — ^when Gordon had found her there and tcld 
her the outcome of that library conference in which she 
had had no part, it seemed as though dreary decades had 
passed. She had lain in his arms at first breathless, 
stricken with a weight of voiceless grief, while he 
spoke, hopefully, calmly, of the cause and his determi- 
nation. The great cry into which her agony bled at 
length had gripped his soul. She had felt his heart leap 
and quiver against her, shaken with her sobs, and knew 
he suffered with her in every pang. It was a reali- 
zation of this that had finally given her self-control and 
a kind of calmness. 

In the time that followed: weeks of preparation, 
correspondence with the Revolutionary Committees and 
with Mavrocordato, who had preceded Gordon to Greece, 
selection of stores, the chartering and freighting of the 
brig Hercules at Genoa — all the minutiae that visual- 
( 386 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


387 


ized the departure that must come — ^the two sides of 
her love had struggled together. 

Sometimes the smaller, the less unselfish personal 
passion, gained temporary mastery. What was she to 
him if she were not more than everything else? What 
was Greece to her ? Once he had said that all he should 
ever write would spring from her love. Was that love 
fit only to inspire poems upon paper? How he left her 
and forsook that love to go to a useless danger — and she 
had given him all! The thought sobbed in her. She 
was a woman, and she struggled with a woman’s an- 
guish. 

Then her greater soul would conquer. She would 
remember that night on the square in Venice, the 
glimpse of his tortured self-amendment at San Lazzarro, 
and the calmer strength she had felt growing in him 
from the day their lips met on the convent hill. Her 
instinct told her this determination of his was only a 
further step in that soul-growth whose first strivings 
she had herself awakened. This gave her a melancholy 
comfort that was sometimes almost joy. In his face 
of late she had distinguished something, subtle and 
significant, that carried her back to the night she had 
left his book at the feet of Our Lady of Sorrows. It 
was the veiled look she had then imagined the object 
of her petition, the fallen angel sorrowing for his lost 
estate, would wear — the patience and martyrdom of 
renunciation. 

These struggles of hers had been the ultimate re- 
vealment, as the hour she had held Gordon’s bleeding 
body in her arms had been life’s primal comprehension. 
That had shown her love’s heights and depths; this 


388 


THE CASTAWAY 


taught her all its breadth, its capacity for self-abnega- 
tion, its wild, unselfish yearning for the best good of 
the thing beloved. 

As she and Fletcher prepared the bare necessities 
he was to take with him, his buried London life had 
risen before her. The woman who should have loved 
him most — ^his wife — ^had sent him into a cruel ostra- 
cism, hating and despising him. She whom the law’s- 
decree forbade that he should love, was sending him 
away, too, but to a noble cause and with a breaking 
heart. She had made his present better than his past. 
Should not his future he even more to her than the 
present ? 

All had at last been put in readiness. Waiting the 
conversion of his English properties, Gordon had util- 
ized all his Italian funds. Ammunition, horses from 
his own stable, field-guns and medicines for a year’s 
campaign had been loaded under his tireless super- 
vision. Lastly, he had taken aboard with his own 
hands ten thousand crowns in specie and forty thousand 
in bills of exchange. Four days before, with himself 
and Fletcher aboard, the brig had sailed from Genoa, 
whence swift couriers had daily brought Teresa news, 
for he had small time for pen work. To-day the ves- 
sel had cast anchor at Leghorn, her final stop, only a 
few hours away. To-night, since she put to sea with the 
dawn-tide, Gordon was to come for a last farewell. 

As Teresa sat waiting in the garden, she tried not 
to think of the to-morrow, the empty, innumerable 
io-morrows. It was already quite dark, for there was 
no moon ; she was thankful for this, for he could not so 
readily see her pallor. He should carry away a re- 


THE CASTAWAY 


389 


collection of hope and cheerfulness, not of agony or 
tears. With a memory of what she had been singing the 
night of Blaquiere’s coming, she lifted her harp and be- 
gan softly and bravely, her fingers finding their way on 
the strings by touch ; 

“Then if thou wilt — no more my lonely Pillow, 

In one embrace let these arms again enfold him. 

And then expire of the joy — but to behold him! 

Oh! my lone bosom! — oh! — my lonely Pillow!’* 

The effort was too great. The harp rebounded 
against the ground. She bowed her head on the arm 
of the bench and burst into sobbing. 

The twang of the fallen harp called loudly to one 
whose hand was on the postern gate while he listened. 
He came swiftly through the dark. 

She felt his arms close about her, her face, torn with 
crying, pressed against his breast. So he held her till 
the vehemence of her weeping stilled, and her emotion 
appeared only in long convulsive breaths, like a child’s 
after a paroxysm of grief. 

When Gordon spoke, it was to tell of sanguine news 
from the English Committee, of the application of 
French and German officers to serve under him, cheer- 
ful detail that calmed her. 

A long pause ensued. ^^What are you thinking?” 
he asked at length. 

She answered, her eyes closed, a mere murmur in his 
ear: ^^Of the evening you came to the garden at Ka- 
venna. ^ 

^Tt was moonlight,” he replied. 


390 


THE CASTAWAY 


^TTou kissed a curl of my hair,” she whispered. 
slept with it across my lips that night.” 

He bent and kissed her eyelids, her mouth, her fragile 
fingers. ^^My love !” he exclaimed. 

wanted to be strong to-night,” she said piteously. 

^^You are strong and brave, too ! Do I not know how 
you brought me to the casa — ^how you drank the man- 
dragora ?” 

She shivered. "Oh, if it were nothing but a potion 
to-night — ^to drink, and to wake in your arms ! Now I 
shall wake alone, and you — 

"I shall be always with you,” he answered. ^^By day, 
on the sea or in the camp. At night I shall wander 
with you among the stars.” 

shall ask the Virgin to watch over you. Every 
hour I shall pray to God to have you in His keeping, and 
to guard you from danger.” 

His arms tightened. He seemed to hear a chanted 
litany climbing a marble staircase: 

"From lightning and tempest; from plague, pesti- 
lence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from 
sudden death ; 

“Good Lord, deliver us.^^ 

Had he ever prayed? Not to the God of the ortho- 
dox Cassidy, of the stern ecclesiastics who had in- 
veighed against him. Not to the beneficent Father that 
Dallas and Padre Somalian believed in. Never in his 
life had he voiced a petition to a higher power. All he 
had known was that agnostic casuistry of his youth, 
^^The Unknown God” — ^that fatalistic impersonality of 


THE CASTAWAY 


391 


his later career, ^"The Great Mechanism.” He thought 
of lines Teresa’s hand had penned, that since a gray 
dawn when he read and re-read them to the chuckling 
of a fiend within him had never left his breast. They 
had opened a spiritual chasm that was ever widening 
between the old and the new. 

^^Dearest,” he said, would not exchange a prayer 
of yours for all else life could give. You prayed for 
me before you ever saw me, when others gave me bitter* 
ness and revilings.” 

^TTou never deserved that !” 

^Y'ou forgave because you loved,” he answered gently. 
^TTour love has been around me ever since. I was un- 
worthy of it then — I am unworthy now.” 

^^England never knew you,” she protested, ^^as I know 
you. Your soul is good ! Whatever your acts, I know 
it has always been so !” 

He sighed. ^^My soul was full of glorious dreams, 
once — ^this dream of Greece’s freedom was its dearest. 
But they were tainted with regnant passion and foolish 
pride and ingrain recklessness. When the world flat- 
tered me, I threw away all that could have helped me 
rise. I sold my birthright for its mess of pottage. When 
it turned, I scoffed and hated it and plunged further 
away from all that was worthy. Men do more harm to 
themselves than ever the devil could do them. I sunk 
my soul deeper and deeper in the mire — ^because I did 
not care, because I had nothing and no one to care for — 
till you found me, Teresa, that day in the wood at La 
Mira ! You pointed me to myself, to all I might and 
should have been. You taught me first remorse, then 
the idle indolence of regret ; now, at last, the wish to do* 


393 


THE CASTAWAY 


to be! neither success nor failure, praise nor scorn, 
could do this. If there is anything good in me now, it 
is because of that, Teresa ! If the future ever forgets to 
know me as wicked and wastrel, and remembers better 
things I have done or tried to do — 

^^You are the noblest man in the world 
A quick spasm crossed his face in the darkness. 
Noble! Yet how little popular esteem seemed to him 
at that moment! He went on hurriedly, for what he 
had to say must be in few words : 

^^Always — whatever happens — ^you will remember 
what I have said, Teresa ?” 

Whatever happens! She threw her arms about his 
neck, mute with the anguish that was fighting with her 
resolution. 

— that you are all to me. That I love you — you only ; 
that I shall love you to the end.^^ 

^Tf I forgot that, I could not live!^^ she said 
chokingly. 

The great clock struck ponderously from the palace 
hall — a clamorous reminder that he must hasten, for 
the night was almost without a star, and a wreathing 
nebulous mist forbade rapid riding. Through all his 
preparations this hour had reared as the last harbor- 
light of home. It had come and gone like a breath on 
glass. In the still night the chime sounded like a far 
spired bell. Some banal freak of memory brought to 
Gordon’s mind the old church dial jutting over Fleet 
Street in London, and the wooden wild men which had 
struck the hour with their clubs as he issued from John 
Murray’s shop the night of his maiden speech in Par- 
liament. 


THE CASTAWAY 


393 


The strokes counted twelve — midnight. She shud- 
dered as he rose to his feet. 

love — my life !” he said, and clasped her close. 

^^God keep you !” she breathed. 

He left her and went a few steps into the darkness. 
She thought him gone. But he came back swiftly, his 
hands groping. 

He heard a shuddering sob tear its way from her 
heart, but she stood motionless in his arms, her cheek 
grown suddenly cold against his own. 

In that moment a strange feeling had come to her 
that they clasped each other now for the last time. It 
was as though an icy hand were pressed upon her heart, 
stilling its pulsations. 

She felt his arms again release her and knew she was 
alone. 

It lacked an hour of day when Gordon rode into Leg- 
horn, and the first streak of dawn strove vainly to shred 
the curdled mist as he stepped from a lighter aboard the 
Hercules. The tide was at full and a rising breeze 
flapped the canvas. 

Standing apart on her deck, his mind abstracted, 
though his ears were humming with the profane noises 
of creaking cordage, windlass and capstan, he felt as if 
the fall of the headsman’s ax had divided his soul in two. 
He saw his past rolled up like a useless palimpsest in 
the giant hand of destiny — ^his future an unvexed scroll 
laid waiting for mystic characters yet unformed and un- 
imagined. Beneath the bitterness of parting, he felt, 
strangely enough, a kind of peace wider than he had 


394 


THE CASTAWAY 


ever known. The hatred that tracked, the Nemesis that 
had harassed, he left behind him. 

Absorbed in his reflections, he did not hear the 
bawled orders of the ship’s mate, nor the spitting 
crackle of musketry from some ship’s hnlk near by in 
the foggy smother. The brig was lifting and pushing as 
she gained headway. The captain spoke at his elbow. 

^^Begging your lordship’s pardon, a man has just 
come aboard by the ship’s bow-chains. He had a tough 
swim for it and a bullet through the forearm. Says he 
was shanghaied by the Pylades, If we put about, we’ll 
lose the tide. What are your lordship’s orders ?” 

"Ts he Italian?” 

^'No, sir. He says he’s an Englishman, but he looks 
Lascar.” 

^^His name ?” the demand fell sharply. 

^^Trevanion, your lordship.” 

As Gordon stood there, breathing deeply, Teresa, at 
home in her room, stretched at the foot of the cruciflx, 
was crying in a voice of anguish, that icy hand still 
pressed upon her heart : ^^0 God ! help me to remember 
that it is for Greece ! and for himself most of all ! Help 
me not to forget — ^not to forget !” 

For only an instant Gordon hesitated. ^Tjet him 
stay,” he said then to the captain, and turned away to 
his cabin. 


CHAPTER LVII 


THE MAH IN THE RED UNIFORM 

From a vessel lying beyond the shallows that stretched 
three miles from the Greek shore, a pnjff of smoke broke 
balloon-like, to be followed, a moment after, by a muf- 
fled report. 

The crowds of people clustered along the town’s front 
cheered wildly. Every day for weeks they had been 
watching: blue-eyed, dusky Albanians, with horse-hair 
capotes and pistoled girdles; supple lighter complexioned 
Greeks in the national kirtle; Suliotes, whose moun- 
tain wildnesses were reflected in their dress ; and a mis- 
cellaneous mixture of citizens of every rank and age. 

For this vessel bore the coming savior of the Grecian 
nation, the great English peer whose songs for years 
had been sung in their own Romaic tongue, whose com- 
ing had been prated of so long by their primates — ^he 
who should make them victorious against the Turk. 
Was it not he who, in Cephalonia, on his way hither^ 
had fed from his own purse the flying refugees from 
Scio and Patras, and sent them back with arms in their 
hands? Was he not the friend of their own Prince 
Mavrocordato, who in this same stronghold of Misso- 
longhi had fought off Omer Pasha with his twenty 
thousand troops, and now controlled the provisional 
government of Western Greece? Was it not he who had 
Bent two hundred thousand piastres to outfit the fleet 
( 395 ) 


396 


THE CASTAWAY 


before wliose approach Yussuff Pasha’s squadron had 
withdrawn sullenly to Lepanto ? 

They had known of Gordon’s departure from Cepha- 
lonia from the forty Mariotes he sent ahead to be his own 
body-guard, and who strutted it about the fortifications, 
boasting of the distinction. His consort vessel had ar- 
rived, after narrowly escaping capture. His own brig, 
chased by the Turks, had been driven on the rocky coast. 
This they had learned from a surly Arab-like English- 
man, his arm in a sling from an unhealed bullet-wound, 
who had been in the vessel and had found a footsore 
way overland. 

The metropolitan had called a special service in the 
church for his lordship’s deliverance. Now his ship, 
escaping rocks and the enemy, had anchored safely in 
the night, and the roar of salutes from the Speziot 
brigs-of-war that lay in the harbor had waked the sleep- 
ing port. Since daylight the shore had been a moving 
mass, sprinkled with brilliant figures: soldiery of for- 
tune, wearing the uniform of well-nigh every European 
nation. 

There was one who watched that pushing, staring 
multitude who did not rejoice. As he listened to the 
tumult of gladness, Trevanion’s heart was a fiery fur- 
nace. His hatred, fostered so long, was the %e-all and 
end-all” of his moody existence, and the benefit Gordon 
had conferred when he delivered him from Cassidy’s 
marines, had become at length insupportable. With a 
perversion of reasoning characteristically Asiatic, he had 
chosen to wipe it from the slate and make the favor 
naught. He went to Leghorn and to the amaze of Cas- 
sidy, surrendered himself to the Pylades. 


THE CASTAWAY 


397 


This voluntary act, perhaps, made vigilance lighter. 
He watched his chance, leaped overboard in the foggy 
morning, and would have got safe to shore but for one 
well-aimed musket. Chance put the departing brig in 
his way. He had been delirious in the forecastle for 
days from his wound, and knowledge of Gordon’s pres- 
ence and mission had not come to him till the Grecian 
shore was in sight. 

In his durance on the PyJades his hair and beard had 
grown ; he fancied himself unrecognized. Hour by hour, 
watching Gordon covertly, seeing him living and sleep- 
ing on deck in all weathers, eating the coarse fare and 
enduring every privation of his sailors, Trevanion’s 
blood inflamed itself still more. He owed the other 
nothing now ! He raged within himself at the celebrity 
the expedition and its leader acquired at Cephalonia. 
In the pursuit of Gordon’s vessel by the Turks he had 
hoped for its capture. When she ran upon the rocks 
he deemed this certain, and forsook her jubilantly. 
He had no fear of making his way afoot to Missolonghi ; 
strangely enough, years before, during the Feast of 
Eamazan, he had fled over this same path to escape a 
Mohammedan vengeance, and pursued by the memory 
of a Greek girl abandoned to the last dreadful penalty 
because of him — a memory that haunted him still. 

To-day, as Trevanion saw the vessel that held his 
enemy, his eyes gleamed with a sinister regard. 

^^Bah !” sneered a voice behind him in the Eomaic 
tongue. ^^An English noble ! Who says so ? Mavrocor- 
dato. There are those who say he is a Turk in disguise 
who will sell the country to the sultan.” 


398 


THE CASTAWAY. 


The man who had spoken wore the dress of a chieftain 
of lower rank. His comrade answered with an oath : 

^^Or to the English. Kalon malubdi! Give me a 
chief like Ulysses ! In six months he would have gained 
the whole Peloponnesus, but for the coming of this for- 
eigner — ^may a good ball find him !” 

To Trevanion the malediction was as grateful as a 
draft of cool beer to the scorched palate of a waking sot. 
He spoke in the vernacular: ^^There are English, too, 
who would drink that toast ! Who is Ulysses ?” 

His faded sailor’s rig had been misleading. Both 
clapped hands to their belts as, ^^One who will sweep this 
puppet of Mavrocordato’s into the gulf!” the first re- 
plied fiercely. 

‘^May I be there to help !” exclaimed Trevanion, sav- 
agely. ^^Take me to this leader of yours !” 

The two Suliotes looked at him narrowly, then con- 
ferred. At length the chief came closer. 

“li you would serve Ulysses,” he said, ^^meet me be- 
yond the north fortifications at sunset.” 

Trevanion nodded, and they turned away, as a shout 
went up from the assembled people. A boat had swung 
out from the brig’s davits. It carried a flag — a white 
cross on a blue ground — ^the standard of Hew Greece. 

The man with the disabled arm flushed suddenly, for 
his dark, sullen gaze had fallen on the sea-wall, where 
stood His Highness, Prince Mavrocordato, with Pietro 
Gamba. The latter had followed Gordon to Cephalonia 
and from there had come on the Hercules^ consort. A 
slinking shame bit Trevanion as he recalled the day 
when his poisoned whisper would have fired that young 


THE CASTAWAY 


399 


heart to murder; he wheeled and plunged into the hu- 
man surge. 

The couple on the sea-wall watched eagerly. The low- 
ered boat had been rapidly manned. A figure wearing 
a scarlet uniform took its place in the stern-sheets. The 
crowd buzzed and dilated. 

The prince lowered his field-glass. ^^Thank God, he 
is safe!” he exclaimed in earnest Italian. ^^We have 
been in desperate straits, Pietro. With the General As- 
sembly preparing to meet, when all the western country 
is in such disorder, with these untamed mountain chiefs 
fiocking here with their clans, with Botzaris killed in 
battle, and only my paltry five thousand to keep dis- 
sensions in check, I have been prepared for the worst. 
How there is hope. Look !” 

He stretched his hand toward the teeming quay. 
^^They have waited for him as for the Messiah. All the 
chiefs, except Ulysses, who has always plotted for con- 
trol — ^and his spies are in the town at this moment ! — 
will defer to him. With a united front what could 
Greece not do! The Turk could never enslave her 
again. With no supreme head, her provinces are like 
the untied bimdle of sticks — easily broken one at a 
time !” 

They watched in silence while the rowers drew nearer 
across the shallows. 

did not hope to see you here, Pietro,” Mavrocor- 
dato said affectionately, as they started toward head- 
quarters. 

Gamba answered simply: ^^She sent me — ^to guard 
him if I could.” 

Ten minutes more and the boat was at the landing. 


400 


THE CASTAWAY 


The instant its bow touched the masonry before lina^ 
of picked troops, a single bell rang out from the Greek 
church. Other iron tongues took it up. The walls 
shook with rolling salvos of artillery, the firing of mus- 
kets and wild music, as the man in the scarlet uniform, 
colorless and strangely composed amid the tossing agi- 
tation, stepped on shore to grasp the hand of Prince 
Mavrocordato, standing with a long suite of European 
and Greek officers. 

As his gaze swept over the massed soldiery, the frantic 
people, the women on roofs and balconies, the houses 
hung with waving carpets, — a rainbow motley of color, 
— a great shout rolled along the embankments, a tu- 
mult mingled with hand-clapping like a silver rain, that 
drowned all words. Women in the multitude sobbed, 
and on the balconies little children were held up in 
stronger arms to see their deliverer. Every eye was on 
that central figure, with face like the Apollo Belvedere 
and a step that halted as if with fatigue, but with a look 
clear and luminous and the shadow of a smile moulding 
his lips. 

^'Panayeia keep him !” sobbed a weeping woman, and 
threw herself between the lines of soldiers to kiss the 
tassel of his sword. 

The metropolitan, his robes trailing the ground, lifted 
before him a silver eilcon glittering in the sun. 

The soldiers presented arms. 

The bells broke forth again, and amid their jubilant 
ringing the wearer of the red uniform passed slowly, 
with Prince Mavrocordato by his side, into the stone 
building which rose above the quay — ^the military head- 
quarters of the revolutionary forces of Western Greece. 


CHAPTER LYIII 


THE ARCHISTEATEGOS 

Missolonghi had become the center of European at- 
tention. The announcement of the English Committee 
which followed Blaquiere’s return to England was on 
every tongue. 

The Courier had printed a single sneering paragraph 
in which had been compressed the rancor of William 
Godwin, the bookseller. This stated that George Gor- 
don was not even in Greece, that he was in reality living 
in a sumptuous villa on one of the Ionian Islands, with 
the Contessa Guiccioli, writing a companion poem to 
^^Don J uan.’^ But before the stringent disapproval with 
which this bald fabrication was received, the Courier 
slunk to shamefaced silence. 

Thereafter, in the columns of newspaper, pamphlet 
and magazine, there was to be distinguished a curious 
tension of reserve. It was the journalistic obeisance to a 
growing subterranean yet potent revulsion of feeling. 
Dallas had soon found himself the recipient of invita- 
tions from influential hosts desirous to hear of his 
visit to Italy. In the clubs the committee's bulletins 
were eagerly discussed. The loan it solicited found 
subscriptions and the struggle of the Cross with the 
Crescent — ^the cause whose beating heart was now Mis- 
( 401 ) 


403 


THE CASTAWAY 


solonghi — ^began to draw the eyes not of London but of 
England ; not of England but of Europe ; not of Europe 
but of the world. 

To the company gathered in the citadel of this little 
marshy port on the Greek sea-shallows, where freedom 
stirred in the womb of war, outer comment came only 
after multiplied reverberations. They toiled ceaselessly 
— a nucleus of hard-working general officers culled from 
ever3rwhere — planning, drilling, gathering stores, pre- 
paring for the inevitable attack of the Turkish armies 
massing at Lepanto, trying to knit into organization 
the tawdry elements of brigandage to which centuries of 
Turkish subjection had reduced a great nation. They 
labored under a single far-sighted leadership : that of the 
archistrategos of the Greek forces, whose eye seemed 
sleepless and his brain indefatigable. 

Gordon foresaw that Greece’s greatest enemy was not 
the Turks, but her own dissensions. Unification of spirit 
and authority was necessary before all. When Ulysses, 
the recalcitrant, sent him an obsequious embassy it bore 
back a terse answer: ‘T come to aid a nation, not a 
faction.” Ulysses cursed in his beard and sent Trevan- 
ion, for whom he had found more than one cunning 
use, to seduce the Suliote forces camped within the in- 
surgent lines. 

Meanwhile, the money Gordon had brought melt- 
ed rapidly. He had contributed four hundred pounds 
a week for rations alone, besides supporting batteries, 
laboratories and an entire brigade, settling arrears and 
paying for fortification. However large his private re- 
sources, they must soon be exhausted. Could the Eng- 
lish loan fail ? And if not, would it come in time ? If 


THE CASTAWAY 


403 


it was too long delayed, disaster must follow. Discipline 
would lapse. The diverse elements on the point of co- 
alescing, would fly asunder. The issue would be lost. 
This thought was a live coal to him night and day. 

The rainy season set in with all its rigors. Missolonghi 
became a pestilential mud-basket beside which the dikes 
of Holland were a desert of Arabia for dr3rQess. An un- 
known plague fastened on the bazaar and terrified the 
townspeople. But in all conditions, Gordon seemed 
inspirited with a calm cheerfulness. 

He thought of Teresa continually. Oddly enough, she 
stood before him always as he had once seen her on a 
square in Venice, with moonlight tangling an aureole in 
her gold hair, her face now not frozen with mute horror 
■ — that picture had vanished forever! — ^but serene with 
love and abnegation. This face lighted the page as he la- 
bored with his correspondence. It went with him on the 
drenching beach when he directed the landing of cannon 
sent by the German committee — ^more dimly seen this 
day, for a peculiar dizziness and lethargy which he had 
battled for a fortnight, was upon him. 

As he rode back through the rain and the bottomless 
quagmire. Prince Mavrocordato and Pietro Gamba sat 
waiting in his room at headquarters. They had been 
talking earnestly. The outlook was leaden. There had 
been as yet no news of the expected loan. The lustful 
eyes of foreign ministers were watching. Ulysses had 
seized the acropolis of Athens, and his agents were every- 
where, seeking to undermine the provisional govern- 
ment. The Suliotes, whose chiefs swarmed in Misso- 
longhi, had begun to demand money and preferment. 

But these things, serious as they were, weighed less 


404 


THE CASTAWAY 


heavily upon Prince Mavrocordato’s mind than the 
health of the man he now awaited in that cheerless 
chamber. 

Another post would do as well/^ the Greek said 
gloomily. ^^Higher ground, out of the marshes. He 
stays here only at risk to himself. Yet he will listen 
to no proposal of removal.’^ 

‘^What does he say?’^ asked Gamba. 

^^That Missolonghi is the center of Western Greece, 
the focus-point of European observation. And he ends 
all discussion by the question: Hf I abandoned this 
castle to the Turks, what would the partizans of Ulysses 
say ?’ 

Gamba was silent. Mavrocordato knit his bush^ 
brows. He knew the answer only too well. And yet 
the safety of this single individual had come to mean 
everything. Without him Greece’s organization would 
be chaos, its armies, rabbles. 

While he pondered, Gordon entered. He had thrown 
off his wet clothing below. The shepherd-dog crouched 
by the door, sprang up with a joyful whine as the new- 
comer dropped a hand on his head. 

Pietro had a sudden vision of his sister as she placed 
upon him her last injunction — ^to guard this man’s life. 
He had done all he could. Yet to what avail? Watch- 
fulness might ward steel and lead, but what could com- 
bat the unflagging toil, the hourly exposure, the stern 
denial of creature comfort? His eyes wandered around 
the damp walls hung with swords, carbines and pistols, 
to the rough mattress at one side, the spare meal laid 
waiting the occupant’s hasty leisure. In his mind ran 
the words with which Gordon had replied to one of his 


THE CASTAWAY 


405 


protests : ^^Here is a stake worth millions such as I am. 
While I can stand at all, I must stand here.’^ Gamba’s 
thought returned to what the prince was saying : 

Allow me at least to furnish this chamber for your 
lordship. A bed — 

'^Our Suliotes spread their mats on the ground,” was 
the reply, ‘^or on the dirt floor of their miserable huts. 
I am better couched than they.” 

^‘They are used to it,” protested the Greek. ^They 
have never known better. They are proof against marsh 
fever, too.” He paused an instant, then added: 
have just learned that the wines I have ordered sent 
you, have on each occasion been returned to the com- 
missariat.” 

Gordon’s gaze had followed the other’s. The food 
spread there was of the meanest: goat’s meat, coarse 
peasant’s bread, a pitcher of sour cider. He was fight- 
ing back a vertigo that had been misting his eyes. 

^‘My table costs me exactly forty-five paras. That is 
the allowance of each Greek soldier. I shall live as 
they live, Prince, no worse, no better.” 

His voice broke off. He reeled. Mavrocordato sprang 
and threw an arm about him. Pietro hastened to send 
Fletcher to the improvised hospital for the physicians. 

They came hastily, to find Gordon in a convulsion 
of fearful strength, though it lasted but a moment. 
Leeches were put to his temples and consciousness re- 
turned. He opened his eyes upon an anxious group of 
surgeons and staff-officers. 

A commotion arose at the instant from the court- 
yard. Mavrocordato stepped to the window. He made 
an exclamation. The place was filling with Suliotes — • 


406 


THE CASTAWAY 


they were dragging its two cannon from their stations 
and turning their muzzles against the doors. 

An orderly burst into the room. ^^They are seizing 
the arsenal he cried. 

With an oath a Swedish officer leaped down the stair, 
drawing his sword as he ran. He fell stunned by the 
blow of a musket-butt. 

Wild figures, their faces and splendid attire splashed 
with mud, gushed in, choked the stairway, and poured 
into the narrow apartment — ^to waver and halt ab- 
ruptly, abashed. 

This was not what Trevanion had craftily told them 
of — not the abode of soft luxury and gem-hung mag- 
nificence affected by the foreign archistrategos whose 
wealth was limitless and who sipped wines of liquid 
pearls, while they, their pa3unents in arrears, drank 
sharp raisin- juice. What they saw was at strange vari- 
ance with this picture. A chill stone chamber, a meager 
repast, uncarpeted floors. A handful of men, each 
with a drawn sword. These — and a form stretched on 
a rough mattress, an ensanguined bandage about his 
forehead, a single gray-haired servant kneeling by his 
side. 

The man on the couch rose totteringly, his hand on 
Shis servant's shoulder. He was ghastly white, but his 
eye flashed and burned as it turned on those semi-bar- 
baric invaders. 

Gordon began to speak — ^not in the broader Eomaic, 
but in their own mountain patois, a tongue he had not 
recalled since long years. The uncouth vocabulary, 
learned in his youthful adventurous journey for very 
lack of mental pabulum, had lain in some brain-comer 


THE CASTAWAY 


407 


to spring up now with the spontaneity of inspiration. 
At the first words they started, looked from one to an- 
other, their hands dropped from their weapons. His 
voice proceeded, gathering steel, holding them like bayo- 
nets. 

^^Am I then to abandon your land to its enemies, 
because of you, heads of clans, warriors born with arms 
in your hands, because you yourselves bring all effort 
to naught? For what do you look? Is it gold? The 
money I brought has purchased cannon and ammuni- 
tion. It has furnished a fleet. It has cared for your 
sick and set rations before your men. Do you demand 
preferment? You are already chiefs, by birth and by 
election. Have I taken that away? Eank shall be 
yours — ^but do you hope to earn it idly in camp, or fight- 
ing as your fathers fought, like your own Botzaris, who 
fell for his country ? Is it for yourselves you ask these 
things now, or is it for Greece ?^^ 

Of the staff officers there gathered none knew the 
tongue in which he spoke. But they could guess what 
he was saying. They saw the rude chieftains cower be- 
fore his challenge. Then, as he went on, under that 
magnetic gaze they saw the savage brows lighten, the 
fierce eyes soften and fall. 

Gordon^s tone had lost its lash. His words dropped 
gently. He was speaking of those old days when he had 
slept beneath a Suliote tent and written songs of the 
freedom for which they now strove. The handful be- 
side him had put up their swords. For a moment not 
only individual lives, but the fate of Greece itself had 
hung in the balance. They watched with curious in- 
tentness. 


THE CASTAWAY 


'm 

As the speaker paused, a burly chieftain, built like 
a tower, thrust up his hand and turned to the rest, 
speaking rapidly and with many gesticulations. He 
pointed to the rough couch, to the coarse fare on the 
table. The others answered with guttural ejaculations. 

All at once he bared his breast, slashed it with his 
dagger, and touched knee to ground before Gordon’s 
feet. The rest followed his example. Each as he rose, 
saluted and passed out. Before a dozen had knelt, the 
rumble of wheels in the courtyard announced that the 
cannon were being dragged back to their places. 

The last Suliote chief retired and Gordon’s hand 
fell from Fletcher’s shoulder. The headquarters’ sur- 
geon broke the tension: 

^^His lordship must have quiet !” he warned. 

The whiteness had been growing upon Gordon’s face. 
As the officers retired, he sank back upon the couch. 
Mavrocordato held brandy to his lips, but he shook his 
head. 

He lay very still for a while, his eyes closed, hearing 
the murmuring voices of the prince and Gamba as they 
stood with the physicians, feeling on the mattress a 
shaking hand that he knew was Fletcher’s. 

A harrowing fear was upon him. The mutiny that 
had been imminent this hour he had vanquished; he 
might not succeed again. With resources all might be 
possible, but his own funds were stretched to the last 
para. And the English loan still hung fire. If he but 
had the proceeds of a single property — of Eochdale, 
which he had turned over to the committee in London 
— he could await the aid which must eventually come. 
Lacking both, he faced inaction, failure; and now to 


THE CASTAWAY 


409 


cap all, illness threatened him. He almost groaned 
aloud. Greece must not fail! 

There was but one way — ^to fight and fight soon. In- 
stead of waiting till famine made ally with the enemy, 
to attack first. To throw his forces, though undisci- 
plined, upon the Turks. Victory would inspirit the 
friends of the revolution. It would knit closer every 
segment. It would hasten the loan in England. Might 
the assault be repelled? Ho worse, even so, than a de- 
feat without a blow — the shame of a cowardly disinte- 
gration 1 

^‘Prince — Gordon summoned all his strength and 
sat up. ^^May I ask you to notify my staff-officers to 
meet me here in an hour? We shall discuss a plan of 
immediate attack upon Lepanto.” 


CHAPTER LIX 


IN WHICH TERESA MAKES A JOURNEY 

^^Help me to remember that it is for Greece — and for 
himself most of all!’^ That was Teresa^s cry through 
those dreary weeks alone. The chill instinct that had 
seized her as Gordon held her in that last clasp had 
never left her. She struggled always with a grim sense 
of the inevitable. At times she fought the desire to 
follow, even to Greece, to fold him in her arms, to en- 
treat: ^^Give up the cause! Come back to me — ^to 
love!^^ Her sending of Pietro had given her comfort. 
She subsisted upon his frequent letters, upon the rarer, 
dearer ones of Gordon, and upon the remembrance of 
the great issue to which she had resigned him. 

One day a message came from a great Venetian bank- 
ing-house. It told of a sum of money held for her 
whose size startled her. She, who had possessed but a 
slender marriage-portion, was more than rich in her 
own right. An accompanying letter from Dallas told 
her the gift was Gordon’s. A wild rush of tears blurred 
the page as she read. 

That night she dreamed a strange dream; yet it was 
not a dream wholly, for she lay with open eyes star- 
ing at the crucifix that hung starkly, a murky outline, 
( 410 ) 


THE CASTAWAY 


411 


against the wall. Suddenly she started up in the bed. 
Where the ivory image had glimmered against the ebony 
was another face, colorless, sharp-etched, a wavering 
light playing upon it. It was Gordon’s, deep-lined, 
haggard, as though in mute extremity. His eyes looked 
at her steadily, appealingly. 

She held out her arms with a moan. Then the light 
faded, the phantom merged again into the shadow, and 
in the darkness she hid her eyes and swayed and wept. 
She slept no more. A blind terror held her till dawn. 

At noon Tita brought her a Pisan paper, with a col- 
umn of Greek news. It stated that the English loan, 
on which depended the hopes of the revolutionists, was 
still unsubscribed in London. The measure would 
doubtless be too late to stay the descent of Yussuff 
Pasha’s armies. Dissensions were rife at Missolonghi. 
At Constantinople the sultan, in full divan, had pro- 
claimed George Gordon an enemy to the Porte and 
offered a pashawliTc and the three-horse-tailed lance for 
his head. 

The English loan — too late ! Its speedy coming had 
been a certainty in Gordon’s mind before his departure. 
Was it the agony of failure she had seen on the face 
that looked at her from the darkness ? Was he even now 
crucified on the cross of a despairing crisis ? 

A quick thought came to her. The sum he had made 
hers — a fortune, almost a hundred thousand pounds of 
English money! Might not that serve, at least until 
the loan came ? If she could help him thus ! 

There was no time for correspondence, banking rou- 
tine — no time for delays of any sort. It must go now ! 
A daring plan was born in her mind. She could take 


412 


THE CASTAWAY 


it herself, direct to his necessity. Why not? Such a 
brig as Gordon had chartered was no doubt to be found 
at Leghorn. Yet she could not make the voyage with 
but a single servant for escort. To whom could she ap- 
peal ? To whom else could that far-away cause be near ? 

A figure flashed before her with the directness of a 
vision — a man she had seen but once, when with her 
husband, he had confronted her on a monastery path 
one dreadful buried day. The friar of San Lazzarro! 
She recalled the clear deep eyes, the venerable head, the 
uncompromising honesty of the padre’s countenance. 
He had known the man she loved — ^had seen his life 
in that retreat. Was he still there? Would he aid her? 

An hour more and she was riding with Tita toward 
Leghorn harbor. By the next sunrise she was on her 
way to Venice. Three days later Tita’s oar swung her 
gondola to the wharf of the island of Saint Lazarus. 

She stepped ashore and rang a bell at the wall-door 
beside which, in its stone shrine, stood the leaden im- 
age of the Virgin, looking out across the gray lagoon. 

The place was very still. Peach-blooms hung their 
glistening spray above the orchard close, and swallows 
circled about a peaceful spire from which a slow mellow 
note was striking. It seemed to Teresa that only yes- 
terday she had stood there face to face with Gordon. 
With a sudden impulse she sank to her knees before the 
shrine. 

When she rose she was not alone; he who she had 
prayed might still be within those walls stood near — 
the same reverend aspect, the benignant brow, the coarse 
brown robe. 


THE CASTAWAY 


413 


^^What do you seek, my daughter?^’ 

As Teresa told her errand, looking into the soluble 
eyes bent on her, the breeze stirred the young leaves, 
and the tiny waves lapped the margin-stones in a golden 
undercurrent of sound. Her words, unstudied and tense 
with feeling, acquired an unconscious eloquence. A 
great issue in perilous straits; she, with empty afflu- 
ence that might save it — ^but alone, without companion 
for such a journey. 

The friar listened with a growing wonder. In the 
seclusion of that solitude he had long since heard of 
the Greek rebellion — had yearned for its success. But 
it had been a thing remote from his lagoon island. He ? 
To leave the peace of his studies to accompany a woman, 
to a land in the throes of war? A strange request! 
Why had she come to him? 

^^Have I ever seen you before, my daughter ?^^ 

Her heart beat heavily. ^^Yes, Father.’^ 

She was leaning against the rock, her face lifted to 
his. The posture, the pathetic purity of her features, 
brought recollection. 

■ Padre Somalian’s eyes lighted. Since that unfor- 
gotten scene on the path, he had often wondered what 
would be this woman’s wedded life, so tragically begun. 
By her face, she had suffered. Her husband had been 
old then — doubtless was dead. It was a mark of grace 
that she came now to him — a holy man — ^before others. 
If, alone in the world, she chose to consecrate her wealth 
thus nobly, well and good. If there had been fault back 
of that rich marriage, such an act would be in the line 
of fitting penance. 

If there had been fault! The friar’s eyes turned 


414 


THE CASTAWAY 


away. He was thinking of the stranger whose brow her 
hnsband^s blow had marked — of the paper he himself 
had lifted from beneath the stone. Since the gusty 
day when he found the abandoned robe, he had prayed 
unceasingly for that unknown man’s soul. 

^^You will go?” 

The question recalled his thought, gone afar. 

'‘^My daughter,” he demurred, ^Vho am I, bred to 
quiet and contemplation, to guide you in such an enter- 
prise ?” 

Tears had come to Teresa’s eyes. ^Then the hope of 
Greece will perish ! And he — its leader, who has given 
his all — will fail!” 

The padre’s look clouded. It was the undying war 
of Christendom against the idolater, the fight the 
church militant must wage daily till the reign of the 
thousand golden years began. Yet noble as was the Gre- 
cian struggle, to his mind it had been smirched by a 
name famed for its evil. 

would so fair a cause had a better champion!” 
he said slowly. 

Her tears dried away. ^^And you say that?” she 
cried, her tone vibrating. ^TTou who saw him, and with 
whom he lived here ? — ^you ?” 

He thought her distraite, ^^He here? What do you 
mean ?” 

^^Do you not know ? Father, he who leads the Greeks 
is the man with whom I stood that day beside this 
shrine !” 

The friar started. Eapid emotions crossed his face. 
For many a month a sore question had turned itself 
over and over in his mind. Had he stumbled in his 


ETHE CASTAWAY 


415 


duty to that man who had come in hopelessness and 
departed with despair unlightened? Day after day he 
had seen the misery reflected in the countenance. He 
knew now that he had been witnessing the efforts of a 
fallen soul to regain its lost estate — a soul that was now 
flghting in the ranks of the Cross ! In his own self-re- 
proach he had prayed that it might be given him again 
to hold before his eyes the symbol of the eternal suffer- 
ing. Was this not the answer to that prayer? 

His eyes suffused. 

^^Wait for me here, my daughter, he said. "I shah 
not be long. We go together. Who knows if the sum- 
mons you bring be not the voice of God I” 


CHAPTER LX 


TEIED AS BY EIRE 

The night was still, the air sopped with recent rain, 
the sky piled with sluggish cloud-strata through whose 
rifts the half -moon glimpsed obliquely, making the sea- 
beach that curved above Missolonghi an eerie checker 
of shine and shade. 

Between hill and shore a lean path, from whose edges 
the cochineal cactus swung its quivers of prickly arrows, 
shambled across a great flat ledge that jutted from the 
hilFs heel to break abruptly above a deep pool gouged 
by hungry tempests. On the reed-clustered sand be- 
yond the rock-shelf were disposed a body of men splen- 
didly uniformed, in kirtle and capote, standing by their 
hobbled horses. On the rocky ledge, in the flickering 
light of a torch thrust into a cleft, were seated their two 
leaders conversing. 

They had ridden far. The object of their coming 
was the safe delivery of a letter to the one man to 
whom all Greece looked now. The message was mo- 
mentous and secret, the errand swift and silent. In 
Missolonghi, whose lights glowed a mile away, clang- 
ing night and day with hurried preparation, none knew 
of the presence of that company on the deserted shore, 
( 416 ), 


THE CASTAWAY 


417 


save one of its own number who had ridden, under cover 
of the dark, into the town’s defenses. 

‘^This is a journey that pleases me well, Lambro,” 
averred one of the primates on the rock. wish we 
were well on our way back to the Congress at Salona; 
and the English lordos leading us. What an entry that 
will be! But what if he doubts your messenger — sus- 
pects some trickery of Ulysses? Suppose he will not 
come out to us ?” 

^Then the letter must go to him in Missolonghi,” 
said the other, ^^Mavrocordato or no Mavrocordato. He 
will come properly guarded,” he added, %ut he will 
come.” 

^^Why are you so certain?” 

^^ecause the man I sent to him an hour since is one 
he must trust. It was his sister the Excellency saved 
in his youth from the sack. Their father was then a 
merchant of the bazaar in this same town. Do you not 
know the tale?” And thereupon he recited the story 
as he had heard it years before, little dreaming they 
sat upon the very spot where, on that long ago dawn, 
the Turkish wands had halted that grim procession. 

would the brother,” he closed, ^^might sometime! 
find the cowardly dog who abandoned her I” 

They rose to their feet, for dim forms were coming 
along the path from the town — a single horseman and 
a body-guard afoot. ^Tt is the archistrategos/' both 
exclaimed. 

The younger hastily withdrew; the other advanced 
a step to meet the man who dismounted and came for- 
ward. 

Gordon’s face in the torchlight was worn and hag- 


418 


THE CASTAWAY 


gard, for the inward fever had never left him since that 
fierce convulsion — ^nature’s protest against unbearable 
conditions. Day by day, with the same unyielding will 
he had fought his weakness, pushing forward the plans 
for the assault on Lepanto, slaving with the gunners, 
drilling musket-men, much of the day in the saddle, 
and filching from the hours of his rest, time for his 
committee correspondence, bearing always that burn- 
ing coal of anxiety — ^the English loan which did not 
come. 

The primate saw this look, touched with surprise as 
Gordon caught the stir of horses and men from the 
further gloom. He bowed profoundly as he drew forth 
a letter. 

regret to have brought Your Illustrious Excel- 
lency from your quarters,^^ he said in Eomaic, ^^ut my 
orders were specific.’^ 

Gordon stepped close to the torch and opened the 
letter. The primate drew back and left him on the 
rock, a solitary figure in the yellow glare, watched from 
one side by two score of horsemen, richly accoutred, 
standing silent — on the other by a rough body-guard 
of fifty, in ragged garments, worn foot-wear, but fully 
' armed. 

Once — twice — ^three times Gordon read, slowly, 
strangely deliberate. 

A shiver ran over him, and he felt the torchlight on 
his face like a sudden hot wave. The letter was a sum- 
mons to S'alona, where assembled in Congress the chiefs 
and primates of the whole Morea — ^but it was far more 
than this ; in its significant circumlocution, its meaning 


THE CASTAWAY 


419 


diplomatic phrases, lay couched a clear invitation that 
seemed to transform his blood to a volatile ichor. 

Gordon’s eyes turned to the shadow whence came the 
shifting and stamping of horses — ^then to the lights of 
' the fortifications he had left. He could send back these 
silent horsemen, refuse to go with them, return to Mis- 
solonghi, to his desperate waiting for the English loan, 
to the hazardous attack on Lepanto, keeping faith with 
the cause, falling with it, if needs be ; or — he could wear 
the crown of Greece! 

The outlines of the situation had flashed upon him 
as clearly as a landscape seen by lightning. The letter 
in his hand was signed by a name powerful in three 
chanceleries. The courts of Europe, aroused by the ex- 
periment of the American colonies, wished no good of 
republicanism. Names had been buzzing in State 
closets: Jerome Bonaparte, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. 
But Greece had gone too far for that ; if a foreign ruler 
be given her, he must be one acceptable to the popular 
mind. Governmental eyes turned now to him! He, 
the despised of England, a king! The founder jf a 
fresh dynasty, the first emperor of New Greece ! 

Standing there, feeling his heart beat to his temples, 
a weird sensation came to him. There had been a time 
in his youth when he had camped upon that shore, 
when on that very rock he had struck an individual 
blow against Turkish barbarity. Now the hum of the 
voices beyond turned into a wild Suliote stave roared 
about a fire and he felt again the same chill, prescient 
instinct ihat had possessed him when he said: “It 
is as though this spot — ^that town yonder — were tan- 
gled in my destiny!” Was this not the fulfilment. 


42Q 


THE CASTAWAY 


that on the spot where he had penned his first im- 
mortal lines for Greece, should be offered him her 
throne ? 

A mental barb stung him. It was for Greek free- 
dom he had sung then — ^the ancient freedom tyranny 
had defiled. And would this mean true liberty? The 
^Moslem would be cast out, but for what? A coup 
d'etat! A military dictatorship, bolstered by suzerain 
arms! The legislative government, with the hopes of 
Mavrocordato, of all the western country, fallen into 
the dust! Greece a puppet kingdom, paying compen- 
sation in self-respect to self-aggrandizing cabinets. 

But a Greece with himself upon the throne! 

Far-off siren voices seemed to call to him from the 
darkness. What would be his? World-fame — not the 
bays he despised, but the laurel. A seat above even 
social convention, unprecedented, secure. A power na- 
tionally supreme, in State certainly, in Church per- 
haps — power to override old conditions, to re-create his 
own future. To sever old bonds with the sword of royal 
prerogative. Eventually, to choose his queen! 

A fit of trembling seized him. He felt Teresa’s arms 
about him — warm, human, loving arms — ^her lips on 
jihis, sweet as honeysuckle after rain. For a moment 
^temptation flung itself out of the night upon him. Hot 
such as he had grappled with when she had come to him 
on the square in Venice. Hot such as he had felt when 
Dallas told him of the portrait hidden from Ada’s eyes. 
It was a temptation a thousandfold stronger and more 
insidious. It shook to its depths the mystic peace that 
had come to him on the deck of the Hercules after that 


THE CASTAWAY 


421 


last parting. It was as though all the old craving, the 
bitterness, the cruciate longing of his love rose at once 
to a combat under which the whole mind of the man 
bent and writhed in anguish. 

Gordon’s face, as it stared out fi u the torch-flare 
across the gloomy gulf, showed to th( nan who waited 
near-by no sign of the struggle that wrung his soul, and 
that, passing at length, left him blanched and exhausted 
like one from whose veins a burning fever has ebbed 
suddenly. 

The primate came eagerly from the shadow as Gor- 
don turned and spoke: 

^‘^S’ay to those who sent you that what they propose 
is impossible — ” 

^illustrious Excellency !” 

— that I came hither for Greek independence, and 
if this cause shall fall, I choose to bury myself in its 
ruins.” 

The other was dumb from sheer astonishment. He 
knew the proposal the letter contained. Had not he, 
Lambro, primate of Argos, nurtured the plan among 
the chiefs ? Had not the representative of a great power 
confided in his discretion when he sent him with that 
letter? And now when the whole Morea was ready — 
when prime ministers agreed — the one man to whom 
it might be offered, refused the crown! He swallowed 
hard, looking at the letter which had been handed back 
to him. 

Before he recovered his wits, Gordon had walked un- 
certainly to his horse, mounted, and was riding toward 
the town, his body-guard streaming out behind him, 
running afoot. 


422 


THE CASTAWAY 


As his fellow ojBScer approached him, Lambro swore 
an oath; 

the Virgin ! You shall return to Salona without 
me. I stay here and fight with the English lordos!” 

He rode into Missolonghi that night, and with him 
were twenty of his men. 


CHAPTER LXI 


THE RENUNCIATION 

Gordon entered his bleak room with mind strangely 
numbed. Gamba, now acting as his adjutant, was wait- 
ing, and him he dismissed without dictating his usual 
correspondence. The struggle he had fought had bitten 
deeply into his fund of physical resistance. A tremor 
was in his hands — a cold sweat on his forehead. 

Riding, with the ashes of denial on his lips, it had 
come to him that in this temptation he had met his last 
and strongest enemy. It had fdund him in his weak- 
ness, and that weakness it would not be given him to 
surmount. The sword was wearing out the scabbard. 
His own hand should never lead the Greece he loved to 
its freedom — should never marshal it at its great in- 
stallation. Hone but himself knew how fearfully ill- 
ness had grown upon him or with what difficult pain 
he had striven to conceal its havoc. Only he himself 
had had no illusions. He knew to-night that the final 
decision had lain between the cause and his life itself. 
The one thing which might have knit up his ravelled 
health — ^the abandonment of this miasma-breeding town 
for the wholesome unvitiated hill air of Salona, of the 
active campaign for passive trust to foreign dictation— 
( 423 ) 


424 


THE CASTAWAY 


he had thrust from him. And in so doing, he had made 
the last great choice. 

^‘Lyon !” he said — ^^Lyon !” The shepherd-dog by the 
hearth raised his head. His eyes glistened. His tail 
beat the stone. He whined uneasily as his master be- 
gan to pace the floor, up and down, his step uneven, 
forcing his limbs to defy their dragging inertia. 

As the long night-watch knelled wearily away, drop 
by drop Gordon drank this last and bitter cup of re- 
nunciation. Love and life he put behind him, facing 
unshrinkingly the grisly specter that looked at him from 
the void. 

He thought of Teresa singing to her lonely harp in 
a far-off fragrant Italian garden. His gaze turned to a 
closet built into the corner of the room. In it was a 
manuscript — ^five additional cantos of ^^Don Juan” writ- 
ten in that last year at Pisa, the completion of the poem, 
on which he had lavished infinite labor. He remem- 
bered an hour when her voice had said : ^^One day you 
will finish it — more worthily.” Had he done so ? Had 
he redeemed those earlier portions which, though his 
ancient enemy had declared them ^ffouched with im- 
mortality,” yet rang with cadences long since grown 
painful to him ? The world might judge ! 

He thought of his Memoirs, completed, which he had 
sent from Italy by Dallas for the hand of Tom Moore 
in London. These pages were a brief for the defense, 
submitted to the Supreme Bench of Posterity. 

^^For Ada!” he muttered. ^^The smiles of her youth 
have been her mother’s, but the tears of her maturity 
shall be mine !” 

His life for Greece ! And giving it, it should be his 


THE CASTAWAY 


425 


to strike at least one fiery blow, to lead one fierce clash 
of arms ! He looked where a glittering helmet hnng on 
the wall, elaborately wrought and emblazoned, bearing 
his own crest and armorial motto: ^^Crede Gordon” — ■ 
a garish, ostentatious gewgaw whose every fragile line 
and over-decoration was a sneer. It had been brought 
him in a satin casket by the hand of the suave Paolo, 
the last polished sting of his master, the Count Guic- 
cioli. He would bring to naught that gilded mockery 
of hatred that scoffed at his purpose! A few more 
hours and preparations would be completed for the at- 
tack on Lepanto. To storm that stronghold, rout the 
Turkish forces, sound this one clear bugle-call that 
would ring on far frontiers — and so, the fall of the cur- 
tain. 

At length he sat down at the table and in the candle- 
light began to write. What he wrote in that hour has 
been preserved among the few records George Gordon 
left behind him at Missolonghi. 

“My days are in the yellow leaf; 

The flowers and fruits of love are done; 

The worm, the canker and the grief 
Are mine alone! 

The hope, the fear, the jealous care. 

The exalted portion of the pain 

And power of love, I cannot share. 

I wear the chain. 

Yet see — the sword, the flag, the fleld! 

Glory and Greece around me see! 

The Spartan, borne upon his shield. 

Was not more free. 


426 


THE CASTAWAY 


Awake! (not Greece — she is awake!) 

Awake my spirit! Think through whom 

Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, 

And then strike home! 

Up to the battle! There is found 
A soldier’s grave — for thee the best; 

Then look around and choose thy ground, 

And take thy rest! ” 

The pen fell from his fingers. A sudden icy breath 
seemed to congeal from the air. He rose — ^tried to walk, 
but felt his limbs failing him. He fixed his eyes upon 
a bright spot on the wall, fighting desperately against 
the appalling faintness that was enshrouding him. It 
gyrated and swam before his vision — a burnished hel- 
met. Should the battle after all evade him? Was it 
denied him even to fall upon the field ? A roaring rose 
in his ears. 

He steadied himself against the table and shut his 
teeth. The quiver of convulsion was upon him again — 
and the movement against Lepanto began to-morrow! 
It must not come — not yet, not yet! The very life of 
the cause was wound in his. He would not yield! 

The shepherd-dog had risen whining from the 
;hearth; Gordon felt the rough tongue licking his hand 
— felt but could not see. He staggered toward the 
couch. Darkness had engulfed him, a black giddiness 
from whose depths he heard faintly a frantic barking 
and hurried footsteps on the stair. 


CHAPTER LXII 


GOKDON- GOES UPON A PILGRIMAGE 

Easter afternoon and all Missolonghi was on the 
streets. But there were no festivities, no firing of guns 
nor decorations. A pall had settled on the town, a pall 
reflected in a sky dun-colored and brooding storm. 

To-day had been fixed upon for the march against 
Lepanto, but now war was forgotten. The wheels of 
movement had stopped like those of some huge machine 
whose spring of action has lost its function. Silent 
soldiers patrolled the empty bazaar and the deserted 
docks. The crowds that thronged the pavements — Su- 
liotes, their wild faces softened by grief unconcealed,, 
gloomy officers of infantry and artillery, weeping 
women, and grave priests of the Greek church — con- 
versed in low tones. Even the arrival of a new vessel 
in the harbor had gone unnoticed. Observation cen- 
tered on the stone building fronting the shallows, from 
whose guarded precincts from time to time an aide is- 
sued with news which spread speedily through the de- 
sponding populace — ^the military headquarters where 
the foreign archistrategos lay sick unto death. 

Through the crowds, from the wharf, three figures 
passed in haste. One was a gigantic Venetian servant, 
staggering beneath the burden of an iron-bound che *", 
( 427 ) 


428 


THE CASTAWAY 


Small wonder its weight taxed even his herculean 
strength, for besides bills of exchange for the sum nine 
times over, it contained ten thousand pounds in English 
sovereigns. His huge form made a way for the two 
who followed him: a venerable Armenian friar, bare- 
headed and sandalled, and a woman heavily veiled, 
whose every nerve was strung with voiceless suffering. 

Mercifully a portion of the truth had come to Teresa 
at Zante, and in the few intervening hours, an eternity 
of suspense, she had gained an unnatural self-control. 
Up to the last moment of possibility she had fought the 
dread sense of the inevitable that was rising to shut out 
her whole horizon of future; but before the ominous 
hush of the multitudes, hope had died within her. She 
seemed to hear Mary Shelley crying through the voice 
of that Pisan storm : ^^0, 1 am afraid — afraid — afraid T’ 

Yet, even in her despair, as she threaded the press 
with the friar, she felt an anguished pride and thank- 
fulness. The man on whose life these awe-struck thou- 
sands trembled — ^the all that he had been to her ! And 
she had not come too late. 

In the cheerless stone room, Mavrocordato, Pietro 
Gamba and the men of medicine watched beside tV. 
couch on which Gordon lay. After a long period of . 
consciousness he had opened his eyes. 

A moment he looked about the familiar apartment, 
slowly realizing. He saw the tears on Gamba’s cheeks, 
the grave sorrow that moulded the prince’s face. In 
that moment he did not deceive himself. 

His look drew Mavrocordato — a look in which was a 
question, but no fear. 


THE CASTAWAY 


429 


The other bent over him. "An hour, they think,’’ 
he said gently. 

Gordon closed his eyes. Such a narrow span between 
this life and the unbridged gulf, between the old ques- 
tioning and the great solution. An hour, and he should 
test the worth of Dallas’ creed, should know if the 
friar of San Lazzarro had been right. An hour, and. 
life would be behind him, with its errors ended, its 
longings quenched. 

Its largest endeavor had been defeated : that was the 
closest sting. In his weakness all else sank away beside 
the thought that he had tried — and failed. Even the 
one blow he might not strike. The nation was in straits, 
the loan delayed, the campaign unopened. He caught 
the murmurs of the crowds in the courtyard. His lips 
framed words : "My poor Greece ! Who shall lead you 
now ?” 

Yet he had done his best, given his all, even his love. 
She, Teresa, would know and hold his effort dear be- 
cause she loved him. But there was another woman — 
in England — who had hated and despised him. He had 
piled upon her the mountain of his curse, and that 
curse had been forgiveness. Must her memory of him 
be always bitterness ? In the fraying fringe of life past 
resentments were worn pitifully small. Should he go 
without one tenderer woT*d to Annabel ? 

He tried to lift himseif. "Fletcher !” he said aloud. 

The old valet, shaken with emotion, came forward as 
the others turned away. 

^Tiisten, Fletcher. You will go back to England, 
Go to my wife — ^you will see Ada — ^tell my sister — 
say—” 


430 


THE CASTAWAY 


His voice had become indistinct and the phrases ran 
together. Only fragmentary words could be distin- 
guished : ^^Ada” — ^^my child” — ^^my sister” — ^^Hob- 
house.” His speech flashed into coherence at last as he 
ended: ^^How I have told you all.” 

“My dear lord/’ sobbed the valet, “I have not under- 
stood a word !” 

Pitvful distress overspread Gordon’s features. “Not 
understood?” he said with an effort. “Then it is too 
late !” He sank back. Fletcher, blind with grief, left 
the room. 

A subdued commotion rose unwontedly beneath the 
windows. Mavrocordato spoke hurriedly to an orderly 
who had just come to the door. “Have they not been 
told?” he whispered. “What is the matter?” 

Through the closing darkness, Gordon’s ear caught 
a part of the low reply. “What did he say ?” he asked. 

Mavrocordato approached the couch. “Some one has 
come in a vessel bringing a vast fortune for Greece.” 

The dimming eyes flared up with joyful exultation. 
The cause was not lost then. The armament could go 
on — the fleet be strengthened, the forces held together, 
till the loan came — ^till another might take his place. 

A sound of footsteps fell on the stair — ^there was a 
soft knock. The orderly’s voice demanded the pass- 
word. 

If there was reply, none of the watchers heard it. 
Gordon had lifted himself on his elbow, his head turned 
with a sudden, strange expectancy. “The password?” 
he said distinctly , — ‘‘it is here I” He laid his hand 
upon his heart. 


THE CASTAWAY 


431 


A sobbing cry answered, and a woman crossed swiftly 
to the couch and knelt beside it. 

A great light came to Gordon’s countenance. ^^Te- 
resa !” he gasped. ^^Teresa — my love !” 

The effort had brought exhaustion. He sank back, 
feeling his head pillowed upon her breast. He smiled 
and closed his eyes. 

A friar had followed her into the room. Mavrocor- 
dato beckoned the wondering surgeons to the door. 
They passed out, and young Gamba, after one glance at 
his sister, followed. The friar drew near the couch, 
crucifix in hand, his lips moving silently. The door 
closed. 

After the one cry which had voiced that beloved 
name, Teresa had made no sound. She cradled Gor- 
don’s head in her arms, watching his face with a fear- 
ful tenderness. From the court came the hushed hum 
of many people, from the stair low murmur of voices ; 
behind her she heard Padre Somalian’s breathed 
prayer. Her heart was bleeding with a bitter pain. 
‘Now and again she touched the damp brow, like blue- 
veined marble, and warmed the cold hands between her 
own as she had done in that direful ride when her arms 
had held that body, bleeding from a kriss. 

The day was declining and the air filled with shad- 
ows. The storm that had hung in the sky had begun to 
mutter in rolling far-off thunder, and the sun, near to 
setting, made a lurid flame at the horizon-bars. Gordon 
stirred and muttered, and at length opened his eyes 
upon the red glare. He heard the echoes of the clouds, 
like distant artillery. 

With the energy of delirium he sat up. He began to 


432 


THE CASTAWAY 


talk wildly, in a singular jumble of languages: 
ward! Forward! Courage — strike for Greece! It is 
victory 

The hallucination of weakness had given 1: .m his su- 
preme desire. He was leading the assault on Lepanto. 

"My son,^’ — ^the friar’s voice spoke — "there are other 
victories than of war. There is that of the agony and 
the cross.” 

The words seemed to strike through the delirium of 
the fevered fantasies and calm them. The dying man’s 
eyes fastened on the speaker with a vague inquiry. 
There was silence for a moment, while outside the 
chamber a grizzled servant knelt by a group of officers, 
his seamed face wet with tears, and from the courtyard 
rose the plaintive howl of a dog. 

Through the deepening abyss of Gordon’s senses the 
crumbling memory was groping for an old recollection 
that stirred at the question. Out of the maze grew sen- 
tences which a voice like that had once said: ^^Every 
man bears a cross of despair to his Calvary. He who 
bore the heaviest saw beyond. What did He say ? — 

The failing brain struggled to recall. What did He 
say ? He saw dimly the emblem which the friar’s hand 
held — an emblem that had hung always somt where, 
somewhere in a fading Paradise of his. It expanded, a 
sad dark Calvary against olive foliage gray as the ashes 
of the Gethsemane agony — the picture of the eternal 
sutfering of the Prince of Peace. 

"Not — ^my will, but — Thine !” 

The words fell faintly from the wan lips, scarce a 
murmur in the stirless room. Gordon’s form, in Te- 
resa’s clasp, seemed suddenly to grow chill. She did 


THE CASTAWAY 


433 


not see the illumination that transformed the friar’s 
face, nor hear the door open to her brother and Mavro- 
cordato. She was deaf to all save the moan of her 
stricken love, blind to all save that face that was slip- 
ping from life and her. 

Gordon’s hand fumbled in his breast, and drew some- 
thing forth that fell from his nerveless fingers on to the 
bed — a curling lock of baby’s hair and a worn frag- 
ment of paper on which was a written prayer. She un- 
derstood, and, lifting them, laid them against his lips. 

His eyes smiled once into hers and his face turned 
wholly to her, against her breast. 

^^Now,” he whispered, shall go — ^to sleep.” 

A piteous cry burst from Teresa’s heart as the friar 
leaned forward. But there was no answer. George 
Gordon’s eternal pilgrimage had begun. 


CHAPTER LXIH 

THE GKEAT SILEI^CE 

Blaquiere stood beside Teresa in the windowed cham- 
i>er which had been set apart for her, overlooking the 
courtyard. 

All in that Grecian port knew of her love and the pur- 
pose that had upheld her in her journey. To the forlorn 
town her wordless grief seemed a tender intimate token 
of a loss still but half comprehended. It had surrounded 
her with an unvarying thoughtfulness that had fallen 
gently across her anguish. She had listened to the muf- 
fled rumble of cannon tha^ the wind brought across the 


434 


THE CASTAWAY 


marshes from the stronghold of Patras, where the Turks 
rejoiced. She had seen the palled bier, in the midst of 
Gordon^s own brigade, borne on the shoulders of the offi- 
cers of his corps to the Greek church, to lie in state be- 
side the remains of Botzaris — had seen it borne back to 
its place amid the wild mourning of half -civilized tribes- 
men and the sorrow of an army. 

The man she had loved had carried into the Great Si- 
lence a people^s worship and a nation’s tears. How as 
she looked out across the massed troops with arms at 
rest — across the crowded docks and rippling shallows to 
the sea, where two ships rode the swells side by side, she 
hugged this thought closer and closer to her heart. One 
of these vessels had borne her hither and was to take 
her back to Italy. The other, a ship-of-the-line, had 
brought the man who stood beside her, with the first in- 
stallment of the English loan. It was to bear to an Eng- 
lish sepulture the body of the exile to whom his country 
had denied a living home. Both vessels were to weigh 
with the evening tide. 

Blaquiere, looking at the white face that gazed sea- 
ward, remembered another day when he had heard her 
singing to her harp from a dusky garden. He knew that 
her song would never again fall with such a cadence. 

At length he spoke, looking down on the soldiery and 
the people that waited the passing to the water-side of 
the last cortege. 

wonder if he sees — ^if he knows, as I know. Con- 
tessa, what the part he acted here shall have done for 
Greece ? In his death faction has died, and the enmities 
of its chiefs will be buried with him forever 


THE CASTAWAY 


435 


Her eyes turned to the sky, reddening now to sun- 
set. "I think he knows,’’ she answered softly. 

Padre Somalian’s voice behind them intervened : 
must go aboard presently, my daughter.” 

She turned, and as the friar came and stood looking 
down beside Blaquiere, passed out and crossed the hall 
to the room wherein lay her dead. 

She approached the bier — a rude chest of wood 
upon rough trestles, a black mantle serving for pall. 
At its head, laid on the folds of a Greek flag, were a 
sword and a simple wreath of laurel. A dull roar shook 
the air outside — ^the minute-gun from the grand bat- 
tery, firing a last salute — and a beam of fading sun- 
light glanced through the window and turned to a fiery 
globe a glittering helmet on the wall. 

Gently, as though a sleeping child lay beneath it, she 
withdrew the pall and white shroud from the stainless 
face. She looked at it with an infinite yearning, while 
outside the minute-gun boomed and the great bell of the 
Greek church tolled slowly. Blaquiere’s words were in 
her mind. 

you know, my darling?” she whispered. ^'Do 
you know that Greece lives because my heart is dead ?” 

She took from her bosom the curl of flaxen hair and 
the fragment of paper that had fallen from his chilling 
fingers and put them in his breast. Then stooping, she 
touched in one last kiss the unanswering marble of his 
lips. 

At the threshold she looked back. The golden glimmer 
from the helmet fell across the face beneath it with an 
unearthly radiance. A touch of woman’s pride came 
to her — ^the pride that sits upon a broken heart. 

^‘How beautiful he was!” she said in a low voice. 
^^Oh, God ! How beautiful he was !” 


CHAPTER LXIV 


"op him whom she denied a home^ the grave” 

Greece was nevermore a vassal of the Turk. In the 
death of the archistrategos who had so loved her cause, 
the chieftains put aside quarrels and buried private am- 
bitions — all save one. In the stone chamber at Misso- 
longhi wherein that shrouded form had lain, the Suliote 
chiefs swore fealty to Mavrocordato and the constitu- 
tional government as they had done to George Gordon. 

Another had visited that chamber before them. This 
was a dark-bearded than in Suliote dress, who entered it 
unobserved while the body of the man he had so hated 
lay in state in the Greek church. Trevanion forced the 
sealed door of the closet and examined the papers it con- 
tained. When he took horse for Athens, he bore with 
him whatever of correspondence and memoranda might 
be fuel for the conspiracy of Ulysses — and a roll of 
'manuscript, the completion of "Don Juan,’^ which he 
tore to shreds and scattered to the four winds on a flat 
rock above a deep pool a mile from the town. He found 
Ulysses a fugitive, deserted by his faction, and followed 
him to his last stronghold, a cavern in Mount Parnas- 
sus. 

Rut fast as Trevanion went, one went as fast. This 
( 436 ) 


^HE CASTAWAY 


437 


•✓as a young Greek who had ridden from S'alona to Mis- 
solonghi with one Lambro, primate of Argos. Beneath 
the beard and Suliote attire he recognized Trevanion, 
and his brain leaped to fire with the memory of a twin ' 
sister and the fearful fate of the sack to which she had 
once been abandoned. From an ambush below the en- 
trance of Ulysses^ cave, he shot his enemy through the 
heart. 

On the day Trevanion’s sullen career was ended, along 
the same highway which Gordon had traversed when he 
rode to Newstead on that first black home -coming, a 
single carriage followed a leaden casket from London to 
N ottinghamshire. 

In its course it passed a noble country-seat, the her- 
mitage of a woman who had once burned an eflBgy be- 
fore a gay crowd in Almack’s Assembly Eooms. Lady 
Caroline Lamb, diseased in mind as in body, discerned 
the procession from the terrace. As the hearse came op- 
posite she saw the crest upon the pall. She fainted and 
never again left her bed. 

The cortege halted at Hucknall church, near Xew- 
stead Abbey, and there the earthly part of George Gor- 
don was laid, just a year from the hour he had bidden 
farewell to Teresa in the Pisan garden, where now a 
lonely woman garnered her deathless memories. 

At the close of the service the two friends who had 
shared that last journey — Dallas, now grown feeble, and 
Hobhouse, recently knighted and risen to political 
prominence — stood together in the lantern-lighted 
porch. 

‘^What of the Westminster chapter?” asked Dallas. 
^^Will they grant the permission ?” 


438 


THE CASTAWAY 


A shadow crossed the other’s countenance. Popular 
feeling had undergone a great revulsion, but clerical 
enmity was outspoken and undying. He thought of a 
hitter philippic he had heard in the House of Lords 
from the Bishop of London. His voice was resentful as 
he answered: 

^The dean has refused. The greatest poet of his age 
and country is denied even a tablet on the wall of West- 
minster Abbey !” 

The kindly eyes under their white brows saddened. 
Dallas looked out through the darkness where gloomed 
the old Gothic towers of Hewstead, tenantless, save for 
their raucous colonies of rooks. 

‘^The greatest poet of his age and country!” he re- 
peated slowly. ‘^After all, we can be satisfied with that.” 

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ • ^ 

AFTERMATH 

Springs quickened, summers sped their hurrying 
blooms, autumns hung scarlet flags in the coppice, win- 
ters fell and mantled glebe and moor. Yet the world 
did not forget. 

There came an April day when the circumstance of a 
sudden shower set down from an open carriage at the 
porch of Newstead Abbey a slender girl of seventeen, 
who had been visiting at near-by Annesley. 

Waiting, in the library, the passing of the rain, the 
visitor picked up a book from the table. It was ""Childe 
Harold’s Pilgrimage.” 


THE CASTAWAY 


439 


For a time she read with tranquil interest — then sud- 
denly startled : 

‘*Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child! 

Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart? 

When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled, 
And then we parted, — not as now we part. 

But with a hope. — 

She looked for the name of its author and paled. 
Thereafter she sat with parted lips and tremulous, long 
breathing. The master of the house entered to find an 
unknown guest reading in a singular rapt absorption. 

Her youth and interest beckoned his favorite topic. 
He had been one of the strangers who, year by year in 
increasing numbers, visited the little town of Hucknall 
— travelers who, speaking the tongue in which George 
Gordon had writtsm, trod the pave of the quiet church 
with veneration. He had purchased Hewstead and had 
taken delight in gathering about him in those halls 
mementoes of the man whose youth had been spent 
within them. 

While the girl listened with wide eyes on his face, he 
told her of the life and death of the man who had writ- 
ten the book. He marvelled while he talked, for it ap- 
peared that she had been reared in utter ignorance of 
his writings, did not know that he had lived beneath 
that very roof, nor that he lay buried in the church 
whose spire could be seen from the mole. He waxed elo- 
quent as he told her how the gilded rank and fashion of 
London had found comfort in silence — ^how Tom Moore, 
long since become one of its complacent satellites, had 
read its wishes well ; how he had stood in a locked room 


440 


THE CASTAWAY 


and given the smng seal of his approbation while secret 
flame destroyed the self- iustification of a dead man’s 
name, the Memoirs which had been a last bequest to a 
living daughter. 

The shower pcssed, the sun came out rejoicing — still 
the master of the Abbey talked. When he had finished 
he showed his listener a portrait, painted by the Amer- 
ican, Benjamin West. When she turned from this, her 
face was oddly white ; she was thinking of another por- 
trait hidden by a curtain, which had been one of the un- 
solved mysteries of her childhood. 

On her departure her host drove with her to Huck- 
nall church, and standing in the empty chancel she read 
the marble tablet set into the wall : 

IN THE VAULT BENEATH 
LIE THE REMAINS OF 

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 

THE AUTHOR OP “CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGED 
HE WAS BORN IN LONDON ON THE 22nd OF 
JANUARY, 1788. 

HE DIED AT MISSOLONGHI IN WESTERN GREECE, 
ON THE 19th OP APRIL, 1824, 

ENGAGED IN THE GLORIOUS ATTEMPT TO 
RESTORE THAT 

COUNTRY TO HER ANCIENT FREEDOM AND 
RENOWN. 


HIS SISTER PLACED THIS TABLET TO HIS 
MEMORY. 

A long time the girl stood silent, her features quiver^ 
ing with some strange emotion of reproach and pain. 
Behind her she heard her escort’s voice. He was repeat- 


THE CASTAWAY 


441 


ing lines from the book she had been reading an hour 
before : 

“My hopes of being remembered are entwined 
With my land’s language;^ too fond and far 
These aspirations in their sc^e inclined — 

If my fame should be, as my fortunes are. 

Of hasty blight, and dull Oblivion bar 
My name from out tLj temple where the dead 
Are honored by the nations — let it be — 

And light the laurels on a loftier head! 

Meantime, I seek no sympathies, nor need; 

The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree 
I planted. They have torn me — and I bleed. 

My task is done — my song hath ceased — my them© 
Has died into an echo; it is fit 
The spell should break of this protracted dream. 

The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit 
My midnight lamp — and what is writ, is writ. 
Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been — 

A sound which makes us linger; — yet — farewelF 
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene 
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell 
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell 
A single recollection, not in vain 
He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell!’* 

Could he whose ashes lay beneath that recording 
stone have seen the look on the girl’s face as she listened 
— could he have seen her shrink that night from a wom- 
an’s contained kiss — he would have known that his lips 
had been touched with prophecy when he said : 

‘^The smiles of her youth have been her mother’s, but 
the tears of her maturity shall be mine !” 





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